The Arts of Rule: Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield

Two generations of students inspired by Harvey C. Mansfield come together here to demonstrate how their diverse approaches illuminate the topic of the arts of rule and speak to the wide scope of Mansfield’s contributions. The essays collected here cover both ancient and modern ground. The first section covers topics such as Xenophon’s question of what it is to be a gentleman, Aristotle’s view of friendship, Montaigne’s account of the highest good, and Montesquieu’s elevation of modesty.

KRAUSE AND MCGRAIL

Political Theory | Philosophy

The second section engages Machiavelli’s political theory and its influence on subsequent thinkers, such as Bacon, Hobbes, and Hume. Authors in the third section examine the sources, conditions, and practices of freedom in the context of modern politics, drawing on writers from Shakespeare to Tocqueville to shed light

The arts of rule cover the exercise of power by princes and popular sovereigns, but they range beyond the domain of government itself, extending to civil associations, political parties, and religious institutions. Artful rule both directs the use of authority toward a specific end and posits a more comprehensive vision of the best way of life for human beings. Making full use of political philosophy and benefiting from a range of backgrounds, this collection recognizes that although the arts of rule are comprehensive, the best government is a limited one. CONTRIBUTORS Ben Berger, Mark Blitz, Janet Dougherty, Ioannis D. Evrigenis, David S. Fott, Bryan Garsten, Sharon R. Krause, Steven J. Lenzner, Alan Levine, Mary Ann McGrail, Russell Muirhead, Eric S. Petrie, James Read, Joseph Reisert, Andrew Sabl, Diana J. Schaub, Adam Schulman, Kathryn Sensen, Travis D. Smith SHARON R. KRAUSE is associate professor of political science at Brown University and author of Liberalism with Honor and Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. MARY ANN MCGRAIL, who practices law in Washington, D.C., is author of Tyranny in Shakespeare and editor of Shakespeare’s Plutarch.

THE ARTS OF RUL E

on contemporary debates.

THE ARTS OF RULE ESSAYS IN HONOR OF HARVEY C. MANSFIELD

For orders and information please contact the publisher

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 www.lexingtonbooks.com

ArtsofRulePBK.indd 1

ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1972-3 ISBN-10: 0-7391-1972-9 00000 9 780739 119723

edited by

SHARON R. KRAUSE a n d MARY ANN MCGRAIL 11/14/08 4:54:12 PM

The Arts of Rule

The Arts of Rule Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield

EDITED BY SHARON R. KRAUSE AND MARY ANN MCGRAIL

LEXINGTON BOOKS A Division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The arts of rule : essays in honor of Harvey C. Mansfield / edited by Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1971-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7391-1971-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-1972-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7391-1972-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3263-0 eISBN-10: 0-7391-3263-6 1. Political science—History. 2. Political science—Philosophy. I. Mansfield, Harvey Claflin, 1932– II. Krause, Sharon R. III. McGrail, Mary Ann, 1958– JA81.A753 2009 320.01—dc22 2008036930 Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail Part I: Reflections on the Soul

vii

1

1

What Is a Gentleman? An Introduction to Xenophon Adam Schulman

2

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship Joseph Reisert

23

3

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Kathryn Sensen

43

4

Aristotle and Liberalism Eric S. Petrie

75

5

Against Power and Glory: Montaigne’s Critique of Machiavellian Acquisition Alan Levine

6

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus Diana J. Schaub

Part II: Conversations with Machiavelli 7

How Machiavellian Is Cicero? David S. Fott

3

95

125

147 149

v

vi

Contents

8

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good Travis D. Smith

9

Hobbes’s Clockwork: The State of Nature and Machiavelli’s Return to the Beginnings of Cities Ioannis D. Evrigenis

185

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault: Four Variations on the Zero-Sum Theme James Read

201

10

167

11

Montesquieu’s Political Science: A Cure for Machiavellianism? Janet Dougherty

229

12

New Models and Orders: Hume’s Cromwell as Modern Prince Andrew Sabl

245

Part III: Modern Politics and the Practices of Freedom

267

13

The Source of Hamlet Mary Ann McGrail

269

14

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume Sharon R. Krause

289

15

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered Steven J. Lenzner

313

16

Metrosexual Manliness: Tocqueville’s New Science of Energy Ben Berger

325

17

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties” Bryan Garsten

359

18

Respectable Partisanship Russell Muirhead

377

Part IV: Harvey Mansfield as Teacher and Scholar

395

19

397

Harvey Mansfield: An Appreciation Mark Blitz

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

403

Courses Taught by Harvey C. Mansfield

417

A Brief Biography of Harvey C. Mansfield

421

Index

423

About the Contributors

445

Introduction Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail

This is a book about the arts of rule. It has been created for the purpose of honoring Harvey C. Mansfield, who has taught so many of us so much about these arts. Above all, he has made us aware of their variety. The arts of rule cover the exercise of power by princes and popular sovereigns but they range beyond the domain of government itself. They also guide activity in the many sites within society where the power of government is contested or through which it is internally divided, such as civil associations, political parties, and religious institutions. The art of party politics, for example, is one of the arts of rule—and is available not only for the use of those who frame political constitutions but for political partisans themselves. The arts of rule orient the individual soul as well, helping us to guide ourselves, to steer a true course through the calms and swells, and sometimes the furious gales, of a human life. The art of friendship, for instance, can elevate our aspirations, ennoble our actions, and lead us to better lives. The arts of rule have a comprehensive character in this sense, even if it is true that the best government is a limited one. This comprehensiveness comes from the fact that the arts of rule have their roots in political philosophy. When Socrates asked the question that began political philosophy—What should we do and how should we live?—he meant to make people think about themselves and their polities in light of a larger whole. This wider view puts individual lives and political orders in perspective with reference to enduring principles whose reality is independent of human choices but accessible to human reason. The wider view that philosophy offers is called forth by the activity of ruling itself. For ruling means acting with authority (whether over others or over oneself), and acting always means acting in one way rather than another. vii

viii

Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail

Every action in this sense represents a response to the Socratic question, although some responses are more reflective than others. Each response— every action—manifests a view, however momentary or unstable, about how we should live. Insofar as the activity of ruling, like the activity of being human itself, engages us continuously in these acts of choosing a way of life, it thrusts us onto the terrain of political philosophy. Artful rule makes full use of political philosophy. It orients the exercise of authority for the purpose of achieving some specific end (the stability of the state, for example, or the influence of some party platform, or the perfection of souls), but in doing so it also takes a stand on how we ought to live. Artful rule makes authority effective not only in achieving its immediate ends but also in serving a more comprehensive vision of the best way of life for human beings. The arts of rule are diverse because the best way of life for human beings is a whole that is complex. In fact, it may be that in light of the whole made visible by political philosophy, the best way of life for human beings is not just one way of life at all. We can at least be sure that any sound answer to the question of how we should live will make reference to a variety of human activities. Hence the arts of rule are many. The essays collected here explore the arts of rule in several domains and from multiple perspectives. Written by two generations of Harvey Mansfield’s students, they reflect his inimitable inspiration. They also testify to his Socratic anti-dogmatism as a teacher and mentor, for they demonstrate the diversity of their authors’ ideas, interpretive approaches, and voices. Yet they share a general interest in the arts of rule even as they examine these arts through many different lenses. Harvey has written and taught extensively on the arts of rule, including work on Machiavelli, Burke, and Tocqueville; on statesmanship and party politics; on constitutional government and democracy in America; on executive power; and on manliness. This volume, with its great range of topics and thinkers, speaks to the wide scope of his contributions. We have grouped the essays into three sections, all areas of philosophical inquiry in which Harvey has made a distinctive mark, including reflections on the human soul and the nature of a noble life; the political theory and influence of Machiavelli; and the sources and conditions of modern liberty. A word about each of the contributions will convey the richness and breadth of the whole. The essays that reflect on the cultivation of the soul cover both ancient and modern ground, beginning with Adam Schulman’s investigation of Xenophon. Schulman shows how in Xenophon’s Socratic writings the question, “What is a gentleman?” becomes the philosophical question, the key to self-knowledge and the philosophic life. Friendship is the theme of the essays by Joseph Reisert and Kathryn Sensen. Reisert argues, also through an analysis of Xenophon, that neither philosophy nor political rule is fully compatible with the best form of friendship, and that

Introduction

ix

this fact calls into question the ultimate value of both philosophy and politics. Sensen turns to Aristotle to examine the value that friendship has for the soul, showing how Aristotle’s account of friendship raises deep questions about the nature of the moral life but suggests that the best kind of friendship makes life itself worth living. Eric Petrie’s work on Aristotle asks whether an Aristotelian understanding of the cultivation of the soul might offer a remedy for the aimlessness of liberty in liberal democracy but concludes that Aristotle’s cosmological commitments make his theory not immediately available as a resource for modern politics. Alan Levine examines Montaigne’s account of the highest human good, arguing that although Montaigne excelled in politics, he regarded the quest for political power and glory as coming at the price of the highest good of all, which is selfknowledge. Diana Schaub offers an interpretation of Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, a work whose literary form appeals to the passions for the purpose of elevating them, in effect making modesty—and the virtue of moderation—sexy. The essays that comprise the second section engage the political theory of Machiavelli and its influence on subsequent thinkers. David Fott argues that although Machiavelli’s attack on premodern political thought includes Cicero, the political theory of Cicero is not as much at odds with that of Machiavelli as it seems; indeed, in some respects the two are quite compatible. Travis Smith looks at Francis Bacon’s project of scientific and technological advancement, aimed at the amelioration of the human condition, through the lens of Machiavelli’s injunction to princes to learn how to be “altogether bad.” He shows that Bacon pushed men to be bad in order to become better off, and he points to the deeply antidemocratic implications of this project and the dangers it (still) holds for liberal rule. Ioannis Evrigenis argues that Hobbes’s need to locate a true beginning to political life that is prior to the moment of political founding reflects a distinctly Machiavellian concern, namely the effort to show how a political order can endure over time. James Read broadens the conversation between Machiavelli and Hobbes to include Clausewitz and Foucault as well, and he challenges the view (shared by all four theorists) that the exercise of power must be a zero-sum game, arguing for the importance of understanding power in ways that go beyond the zerosum analogy. Janet Dougherty’s work draws out the influence of Machiavelli on Montesquieu, showing that Montesquieu’s prescriptions for moderate politics combine elements of Machiavelli’s realism about political affairs with Descartes’s standard for science in general. Andy Sabl explores Hume’s treatment of Oliver Cromwell, arguing that Hume saw Cromwell as akin to Machiavelli’s new prince, combining lion and fox (and perhaps a few other animals), and that Hume’s ambivalence about Cromwell so conceived teaches important lessons about modern constitutionalism. The essays collected in the third section examine sources, conditions, and practices of freedom in the context of modern politics. Mary Ann McGrail

x

Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail

provides insight into the workings of Shakespeare’s political imagination by exploring his use of popular religious material in Hamlet as exemplary of the manner in which imaginative writers exercise their own arts of rule. Sharon Krause explores Hume’s ambivalent treatment of moral “enthusiasm” in connection with the rise of political liberty in England, arguing that despite the perils it poses, enthusiasm may be a necessary and valuable support of free government, even when it undermines the moderation Hume so cherished. Steve Lenzner examines Strauss’s treatment of Burke, that most philosophical statesman of modern times, showing how this treatment illuminates the danger that philosophy poses to society and thus elaborating the intrinsic difficulty of political philosophy itself. Ben Berger uses the rubric of “metrosexual manliness” to draw out Tocqueville’s teaching on the value of energy, perspective, and attention in democratic peoples, qualities that mix masculinity and femininity, and that mobilize—and moderate—civic action and resistance to tyranny. Bryan Garsten also writes about Tocqueville, but with a focus on the relationship between religion and partisanship. Garsten argues that the modern democratic perspective, born from the marriage between popular sovereignty and Christianity, opens the door to a new way of seeing in politics, one that is both philosophical and partisan at the same time. Russ Muirhead further elaborates the theme of partisanship in modern politics, exploring the gap between the functional importance of parties in American democracy and their questionable normative standing in the minds of most political theorists. He shows that this gap constitutes a serious vulnerability and offers a vindication of partisanship meant to remedy it. In addition to these essays, the volume includes a section on Harvey C. Mansfield as teacher and scholar. This section begins with an essay by Mark Blitz that reflects on the experience of being Harvey’s student, deftly capturing the distinctive mastery that Harvey brings to both the lecture hall and the seminar room. Yet as Blitz notes, “genuine teaching can only result from genuine learning,” and his essay goes on to identify some of Harvey’s main scholarly contributions. These contributions are documented in detail in the bibliography of Mansfield publications that follows. We also include a list of the courses Harvey has taught over the years and a brief biography. Many of the essays in this volume reflect one of Harvey’s gifts as a teacher, which is to put the great thinkers and classic texts of the Western tradition into conversation with one another. In the classroom, he is masterful at showing Machiavelli in dialogue with Plato, or Rousseau in dialogue with Hobbes, or Nietzsche in dialogue with Marx—and always in ways that complicate and elevate our understanding of each thinker. He also manages to convey, without ever preaching about it, the artistry of the texts he teaches. He makes us see and feel not only the depth of insight but also the intentionality that lies behind the works of a Machiavelli or Hobbes or Rousseau.

Introduction

xi

And this makes it impossible to dismiss easily or unreflectively the ostensible contradictions and absurdities that can sometimes be found in such works. He presses us to consider the manifold possibilities that might exist for explaining or interpreting a text in light of what look to be its imperfections, but without ever suggesting that any particular work is likely to be perfect. The effect of all this is to draw us toward a fuller, more critical understanding of the texts and their ideas, a deeper appreciation of the difficulty of doing political philosophy, and a passionate desire to know more. The essays collected here also reflect Harvey’s skill as a translator and his understanding of the art of translation, which is (properly understood) another of the arts of rule. His translations of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories and The Prince and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (with Delba Winthrop), destined to be used by many generations of students, do not condescend to their originals. These translations, and Harvey’s prefaces to them, teach students how to read great thinkers with care and attention to detail. They also allow students of political philosophy to grapple with (and argue with) great thinkers in a way that avoids elaborate textual apparatus, so that the power and elegance of the mind behind the work can be experienced as close to firsthand as possible. As he does in his lectures and seminars, Harvey strives to display works of genius in his translations by providing guidance rather than making them accessible through a thick layer of contemporary interpretation, as though the books were simply museum pieces. As he once put it, “As translators we represent the diversity of interpretation best when we do not offer one ourselves.”1 This volume follows a very fine first festschrift for Harvey C. Mansfield, edited by Mark Blitz and William Kristol, entitled Educating the Prince.2 Our collection brings together work by a more recent crop of students than could be included in that volume. It is an indication of just how many people Harvey has taught, mentored, and welcomed into the field over the years that one festschrift could not possibly be enough. Indeed, it was only considerations of space that prevented more essays from being included in this volume. Harvey’s students are widely dispersed, and quite disparate too, the latter fact reflecting his distinctly non-doctrinaire approach to mentoring. Is this a mark of his philosophical soul or his liberalism? In Harvey the two come together. Different as his students are, however, we are bound together by one very powerful commonality, which is our gratitude for the many, often unwitting, gifts that Harvey has delivered over the years. We pay tribute here, too, to the late Delba Winthrop, who was so much the center of Harvey’s life while he has been a part of ours, and whose generosity and sound counsel helped so many of us along the way. These essays document our debts to Harvey but do not repay them. They are less than he deserves, but they are offered with hearts that could not be more grateful.

xii

Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail

We wish to thank each of the contributors for their hard work on this volume, which was a combined effort, and for their willingness to contribute original scholarship. In addition, we are indebted to our editor at Lexington Books, Joseph Parry, for his guidance and patience, to our indexer, Blythe Woolston, and to James Brandt and Catherine Forrest Getzie.

NOTES 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), translators’ preface, xci. 2. Mark Blitz and William Kristol, eds., Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

I REFLECTIONS ON THE SOUL

1 What Is a Gentleman? An Introduction to Xenophon1 Adam Schulman

This is an essay about Xenophon, the cavalry commander, writer, and student of Socrates who wrote four books about his teacher. Xenophon’s Socratic writings, today unjustly neglected, offer a portrait of Socrates that differs in interesting ways from Plato’s presentation of Socrates in his dialogues. The first goal of my essay will be to exhibit some of these differences and to explore their implications for how we are to understand the philosophic way of life. My second goal is to introduce the reader to the characteristic question of Xenophon’s Socratic writings, namely, “What is a gentleman?” I will argue that this is in a sense the philosophic question, that is, the question that must be thoroughly investigated, or else genuine self-knowledge will be impossible. Xenophon’s association with Socrates lasted until he was in his late twenties, a few years before Socrates’s trial and execution. Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, gives the following account of how their association began: Xenophon was the son of Gryllus, an Athenian, of the deme of Erchia; he was modest and extremely good-looking. They say that Socrates met him in an alley and stretched out his stick to bar the way, while he asked him where various products were sold. When Xenophon answered, he again questioned him, asking him where human beings became gentlemen. Xenophon was perplexed, whereupon Socrates said, “Then follow me, and learn.” And from that time onward Xenophon was a student of Socrates. (L II.48)

The occasion on which Xenophon left Athens and Socrates was the receipt of a letter from his friend Proxenus, inviting him to travel with him to 3

4

Adam Schulman

seek the friendship of Cyrus, the younger brother of the Persian king. At the time Cyrus was assembling a large army, including thousands of Greek mercenaries, in hopes of seizing the Persian throne from his brother, Artaxerxes. As he later wrote (AC III.1.4–7), Xenophon first consulted Socrates about the journey. Socrates was dubious and advised his young friend to consult the god at Delphi. So Xenophon went and asked Apollo “to which of the gods he should sacrifice and pray in order to make the intended journey most nobly and best and to come back safely, having acted nobly.” In answer Apollo told him to which of the gods he must sacrifice. When Xenophon reported the oracle’s response to Socrates, Socrates blamed Xenophon because he had not first asked whether it was better for him to make the journey or not, but instead had decided himself that he must go and only asked the god how to make the journey most nobly. “But since you have asked in this way,” said Socrates, “you must do what the god commands” (AC III.1.4–7). Xenophon was destined never to see Socrates alive again. After taking leave of Socrates, Xenophon set sail with Proxenus for Sardis in Lydia, where he found the army of Cyrus ready to begin its “anabasis,” or upward march, to Babylon, before whose gates it would meet the army of Artaxerxes in the battle of Cunaxa. The story of this ill-fated campaign is beautifully told in Xenophon’s book entitled The Anabasis of Cyrus. Suffice it to say that, while the Greeks fought with disciplined valor and considerable success, Cyrus himself was killed, his barbarian troops melted into the hills, and the Greek army found itself cut off in a strange land, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by hostile barbarians, with most of its generals dead. Xenophon, who had accompanied Cyrus “neither as general, nor as captain, nor as private” (AC III.1.4), nonetheless became a leader in the safe retreat of “The Ten Thousand” from Babylon back to Greece, against overwhelming odds. Along the way, Xenophon commanded troops in many battles and parleyed with the rulers of many nations. In the course of this adventure Xenophon was offered a number of unusual opportunities: to found a great city on the shores of the Black Sea (AC V.6.15–33), to become sole commander of the Ten Thousand (AC VI.1.18–33), to marry a Thracian princess (AC VII.2.38), and even to become ruler of the city of Byzantium, the future site of Constantinople and present-day Istanbul (AC VII.1.18–31). Xenophon passed up these temptations, after giving each of them due consideration. I have told you all this in order to give evidence that, in contrast to Plato, Xenophon’s early association with Socrates reflected only one side of his life and his interests. By telling us of his eagerness to seek the friendship of Cyrus, with or without the approval of Socrates, Xenophon shows that, at least as a young man, war and politics competed in his soul with the attractions of philosophy. Even his writings suggest a practical bent that has no obvious counterpart in Plato. In addition to his four Socratic works,

What Is a Gentleman?

5

Xenophon wrote ten other books, including a study of the education of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, and a continuation of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, as well as treatises on the Athenian and Spartan constitutions, on revenues, on commanding cavalry, on horsemanship, and on hunting with dogs. Xenophon seems to have been seriously drawn to the life of action as well as to that of theory. Whether this versatility reflects strength or rather some incapacity in Xenophon’s soul compared to Plato’s is a question worth pondering. Another difference between Plato and Xenophon becomes apparent when we turn our attention to Xenophon’s Socratic writings. Like Plato Xenophon wrote an Apology of Socrates and a Symposium, in addition to a book of Memorabilia, or “Recollections,” and a dialogue entitled Oeconomicus, or “The Household Manager.” The reader of Plato’s dialogues who is inspired and uplifted by Plato’s presentation of philosophy there is liable to be disappointed by what he finds in Xenophon. In Plato we encounter unforgettable images of the philosophic life, elaborate proofs of its superiority to all other lives, moving exhortations to philosophize, and impressive demonstrations that the philosopher is the wisest, most just, most courageous, most moderate, and most splendid of all human beings. In places, the discourse becomes elevated, sublime, even tragic. Philosophy comes across as a noble and heroic ascent out of the shadows of ignorance and prejudice into the brilliant sunlight of truth, beauty, and the idea of the good. In comparison Xenophon’s Socrates seems rather prosaic. He has many dull conversations with many dull fellows. Reading the Oeconomicus, one has the impression of having wandered by accident into a class on home economics. The topics of Socrates’s conversation include how to manage your money, how much manure to shovel onto your oat and barley fields, and how to organize the pots and pans in your kitchen. With Xenophon’s Socrates one hears talk of good remedies for various annoyances such as fever, hunger, or eye strain, but not a hint of the idea of the good (M III.8.2–3). He rarely mentions philosophy and never praises it in the elevated tones of Plato’s Socrates. One gets the impression from Xenophon that there is really nothing exalted or splendid about philosophy, that the philosopher has more in common with, say, a crass businessman than with anyone noble or heroic. For readers who have the taste for it, Xenophon’s presentation of Socrates is often quite amusing, but never moving or thrilling. Nothing in Xenophon corresponds to Plato’s images of the sun, the cave, and the divided line in the Republic, the Republic’s myth of Er, the myth of recollection in the Meno, of the immortal soul at the end of the Phaedo, of the two-horse chariot in the Phaedrus, or the ladder of love in the Symposium. The contrast may be drawn more precisely by briefly comparing the Apologies of Plato and Xenophon. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates describes the

6

Adam Schulman

philosophic way of life as a sacred mission imposed on him by the oracle at Delphi (A 21A). Philosophy comes across as a noble vocation: for those capable of it, there is a solemn duty to philosophize, which it would be shameful and cowardly to neglect. In his heroic determination to risk his life rather than abandon his station, Socrates compares himself to Achilles (A 28C). He describes himself as a gadfly sent by God to wake up the sleepy city (A 30C). And he proclaims that for a human being the unexamined life is not worth living (A 38B). Xenophon’s Apology seems manifestly more limited in scope. At its start Xenophon baldly announces that his intention is merely to show how Socrates deliberated about his defense and about the end of his life. More particularly, Xenophon claims that other published accounts of the apology manage to capture its megalegoria, that is, the boastful or grandiloquent style of Socrates’s speech, but they do not adequately explain why Socrates adopted that style. Consequently, these other accounts, presumably including Plato’s, leave the impression that the boastfulness of Socrates’s defense speech was rather imprudent. Xenophon’s limited purpose is to correct this misimpression by showing that Socrates had come to the conclusion that for him, at his advanced age, death was preferable to life. Unlike Plato, Xenophon was not present at the trial, nor was he a companion of Socrates in his final days. But Xenophon reports a conversation that Socrates had with another companion, Hermogenes, around the time of the trial. Socrates explains to Hermogenes why he is not spending much time preparing his defense. He says he tried twice to consider his defense but his daimonion or divine sign opposed him. Nor is Socrates surprised by its opposition, for if he should win acquittal what would he have to look forward to? If my age will advance further, I know that it will be necessary to pay the dues of old age, to see and to hear less well and to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful of what I have learned. And if I perceive that I am becoming worse and I find fault with myself, how could I still live pleasantly? (XA 6) Instead, continues Socrates, the god has benevolently arranged for him a death not only at an opportune age but also in the easiest way. For it is clear that, if I am condemned now, it will be possible for me to avail myself of the death which has been judged by those in charge of this business to be of all deaths the easiest, least troublesome to friends, and productive in them of the most regret. (XA 7)

Socrates concludes that it would not be to his advantage to win acquittal at the trial, for as a result, instead of now passing out of life I would have arranged to end my life while being pained by sicknesses or by old age, where all hardships converge, empty of good cheer. (XA 8)

What Is a Gentleman?

7

For these reasons, writes Xenophon, the arrogant speech by which Socrates helped to insure his conviction and execution was actually well suited to his interests and his intentions. Our first impression, then, is that Xenophon wrote his Apology not to memorialize Socrates’s defense nor to compete with Plato’s account of the trial, but merely to supplement and correct that account on one point. Alfred North Whitehead once summarized the European philosophical tradition as “a series of footnotes to Plato.”2 If ever there were a work of Western philosophy that asked to be called a footnote to Plato, I think it would be Xenophon’s Apology. And yet, the correction Xenophon offers proves on consideration to have rather serious implications. After all, Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates has been largely responsible for our modern image of Socrates as a defiant champion of freedom of inquiry, a tragic martyr to superstition and intolerance. But the luster of this portrait might be somewhat diminished if we gave credence to Xenophon’s claim that Socrates deliberately engineered his own condemnation chiefly in order “to escape the hardest part of life and meet the easiest of deaths” (XA 32). In Xenophon’s presentation, the death of Socrates does indeed show him to be a man of virtue, but the virtue in question was not integrity, much less a devotion to duty even to the point of death, but rather a certain toughness or strength of soul, rome tes psyches: He displayed his strength of soul, for when he recognized that to be dead was better for him than to live longer, just as he did not resist other good things, so did he not soften in the face of death, but cheerfully he both awaited it and accomplished it. (XA 33)

Xenophon appears to be saying that strength of soul so understood, as a kind of resoluteness in pursuing what one recognizes as good for oneself, even when that pursuit proves arduous or painful, is the keystone of Socrates’s character and perhaps the moral basis of the capacity to philosophize. So how can we fit together the tragic-heroic picture of Socrates derived in part from Plato’s dialogues and the much drier, more reserved picture of Socrates offered by Xenophon? Perhaps a useful clue can be found in a wellknown remark of Plato’s in the writing known as his Second Letter. In the context, Plato is discussing the danger of writing and publishing one’s teachings, which could easily do harm by getting into the wrong hands. After suggesting that it is better not to write at all but to learn things by heart, Plato adds, “There is no writing of Plato’s nor will there ever be; those that are now so called belong to a Socrates become beautiful and young” (SL 314C). I interpret this remark as follows: The Platonic dialogues do not directly convey Plato’s teachings about any important matter, nor do they

8

Adam Schulman

simply express the teachings of Socrates. Instead, they present an altered Socrates, a Socrates made beautiful and young, or perhaps noble and new (kalos kai neos). In other words, Plato gives us reason to believe that the portrait of Socrates offered in his dialogues has been deliberately ennobled and renovated, in part to obscure the true character of his opinions. And this alone should incline us to examine very attentively the more sober portrait of Socrates contained in Xenophon’s writings. It goes almost without saying that the differences between the Platonic and Xenophontic presentations of Socrates need not imply that Plato and Xenophon had any fundamental disagreement about what Socrates taught. It may be that those differences are primarily rhetorical, i.e., that they reflect different views about the most effective way to present Socrates to various audiences. Certainly there will be those readers who are inspired by Plato’s captivating portrait of Socrates to devote themselves to the practice of philosophy, while finding that Xenophon’s Socratic writings leave them cold and unmoved. On the other hand, some readers who find Plato’s presentation of philosophy rather theatrical may prove susceptible to the quieter charms of Xenophon’s Socrates. A youthful love of Plato is not incompatible with a middle-aged fondness for Xenophon. A taste for Xenophon is consistent with Stendhal’s remark about philosophers and bankers, much admired by Nietzsche: To be a good philosopher, one must be dry, clear, without illusion. A banker who has made a fortune has one part of the character required for making discoveries in philosophy, that is to say, for seeing clearly into what is.3

Plato may be preferable if we wish to be stirred up even at the cost of some clarity; Xenophon is perhaps more suitable for those who want to be absolutely clear about what the philosophic life has to offer. Let it be noted, however, that even within the Platonic dialogues we are shown that an early devotion to philosophy for the wrong reasons may prove short-lived. I am thinking of the dialogue Parmenides, which reports a conversation between an elderly Parmenides, a middle-aged Zeno, and a very young Socrates. In their conversation Socrates is eager to present to the older men his theory of ideas as a solution to the problem of the one and the many. Parmenides manages to embarrass and confuse Socrates by asking him whether there are ideas of hair, mud, and dirt as well as of the just, the beautiful, and the good. When Parmenides sees that Socrates is ashamed to let such ugly and disgusting notions into his system, he says, “You are still young, Socrates, and philosophy has not yet taken hold of you, as it later will in my opinion, when you no longer despise such things. But now, on account of your youth, you still look to the opinions of human beings” (P 130E). According to Parmenides, Socrates himself had to over-

What Is a Gentleman?

9

come a certain squeamishness or high-minded attachment to the noble in order to become genuinely open to philosophy. The conversation between Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates is narrated many years later by a certain Antiphon, a friend of a friend of Zeno’s, who used to study philosophy with great care but now devotes most of his time to horsemanship. I suspect that Antiphon’s turn from philosophy to horses is more or less the fate of many a young student who first embraced philosophy when it seemed a noble avocation, only to lose interest later on when this quality proved elusive. Finally, it seems likely that the fullest understanding of Socrates and the philosophic life can be attained not by choosing between the Platonic and the Xenophontic portrayals, but by examining each in the light of the other. For one thing, it is quite possible that both Plato and Xenophon intentionally obscured the Socratic teaching by exaggerating certain aspects of his life and character, Plato in the direction of the high and the exalted, Xenophon in the direction of the low and the utilitarian. For another thing, reading one author makes one more attentive to subtle aspects of the other that might otherwise go unnoticed. Plato’s dialogues, especially the smaller, more obscure ones, are by no means devoid of the kind of quiet, simple, lighthearted discussion of seemingly pedestrian subjects in which Xenophon’s Socrates habitually indulges. Without Xenophon it would be easier to forget that even the Platonic Socrates sometimes takes “the low road.” As for Xenophon, even when his Socrates is engaged in apparently trivial or even crass conversations on petty topics, the text contains occasional quiet hints that, at least for Socrates, what is at stake in the conversation is a question of great philosophical significance. Plato’s much more explicit invocation of the big questions of philosophy can help us to see what is going on behind the scenes, as it were, of Xenophon’s Socratic conversations. Having considered at some length the distinctive style of Xenophon’s Socratic writings, let us turn now to their substance. What does it mean to philosophize according to Xenophon? What question or questions does Xenophon’s Socrates spend his time investigating, how does he investigate them, and why? I mentioned earlier that nothing in Xenophon’s Apology corresponds to Socrates’s claim in Plato’s Apology that he embarked on his philosophic quest in obedience to the command of the Delphic oracle. Xenophon’s Socrates does mention an oracle in which his friend Chaerophon was told by Apollo that no man is freer, more just, or more prudent than Socrates (XA 14). But he does not invoke this oracle at all to account for why he began to philosophize in his distinctive way, viz., by hanging around the agora questioning prominent Athenian citizens about the noble, the just, and so forth. In Plato’s Apology, in contrast, Socrates explains at some length that it was the god’s pronouncement that “no man is wiser than Socrates” that made him start questioning the politicians, the

10

Adam Schulman

poets, and the artisans in search of genuine wisdom about “the greatest things” (A 21A–23C). This dialectical scrutiny of the opinions of other citizens regarding the noble and the just contrasts with Socrates’s earlier preoccupation with natural philosophy, as acknowledged in Plato’s Phaedo and lampooned in Aristophanes’s Clouds. Thus, according to Plato’s Apology, the Delphic oracle is the source of the “Socratic turn” from natural philosophy to political philosophy. In order to find anything like a counterpart in Xenophon to this Platonic explanation of the origin of Socrates’s mature philosophy, we must turn to Xenophon’s dialogue entitled Oeconomicus, or “The Household Manager.” To begin with, let me acquaint you with the drama that unfolds in this dialogue. The Oeconomicus recounts a conversation between Socrates and Critobulus, the profligate son of Socrates’s wealthy friend Crito. In that conversation, at which Xenophon says he was present, Socrates attempts to help young Critobulus become a more responsible and effective manager of his household and property, which he has lately been neglecting. But the conversation opens with a rather theoretical discussion of the art of household management, which takes up most of the first chapter. In short order Socrates leads Critobulus to the following conclusions: One who possessed the art of household management would be just as capable of managing another’s household as his own. Strictly speaking, one’s household is not just one’s house, but one’s possessions, whether inside or outside of the house. Again, strictly speaking, one’s possessions are not just the things one owns legally, but whatever one can make good use of; conversely whatever one owns without being able to make good use of it is not truly one’s possession. Whatever is beneficial to a man is a possession (ktema) and is wealth (chrema) for that man. For the man who knows how to benefit from them, all things in the world are wealth, including people: friends are wealth for those who know how to use them, and so are enemies, since many households of private men have been increased through war or through tyrannies. Strictly speaking, then, the art of household management would encompass the skillful use of all things and persons in the world for one’s own advantage, using all appropriate means, up to and including tyranny and wars of aggression. Of course, the proper application of this art depends on perfect knowledge of the good, understood as the advantageous or beneficial. To this radical line of argument Critobulus responds mildly, “These things seem to me, at least, nobly spoken, Socrates.” (O 1.1–16) Why does Socrates lead his young friend in this shocking direction? Why in particular does he suggest that, from the point of view of Socrates or of the philosopher, tyranny and imperialism are natural and reasonable extensions of the art of household management? Xenophon does not say, but he shows that Critobulus at least is not particularly interested in applying this teaching to his own life. Instead Critobulus steers the conversation in

What Is a Gentleman?

11

another direction, pressing Socrates to discuss a situation much more relevant to his own predicament, viz., the case of a household manager who has the requisite knowledge and resources but for some reason is unwilling to apply himself, with the result that his household falls into neglect and disorder. (O 1.16–23) We sense here, and throughout the dialogue, a divergence of interests on the part of Socrates and his young interlocutor. Socrates seems to be interested in exploring the art of household management, its proper limits if there are any, its relation to tyranny, and its connection with knowledge of the good or the beneficial. Critobulus, for his part, seems eager to enlist Socrates’s aid in improving his work habits and restoring order to his own household, or, failing that, to hire Socrates himself to manage his household for him so as to produce a surplus. In the course of the dialogue we see a constant gentle tug-of-war between Socrates, who pursues his deeper line of inquiry, and Critobulus, who again and again pushes the discussion toward topics more directly pertinent to his present anxieties. On the surface, at least, Socrates appears remarkably tractable in permitting Critobulus’s concerns to dictate the scope and direction of the conversation. We shall see, however, the extent to which Socrates manages to explore his deeper questions while apparently answering the appeals of his troubled young friend. If the first chapter of the Oeconomicus presents an argument that, from the perspective of the philosopher, household management is the art of acquiring wealth by any and all means, including war and tyranny, the second chapter strongly suggests that the philosopher has little use for that art, at least if wealth is understood as money. Socrates goes so far as to state that he himself, whose house and property might bring 5 minae if sold, is much wealthier than Critobulus, whose estate is worth more than 100 times that sum. To Socrates Critobulus seems very poor: “Yes, by Zeus, there are times when I greatly pity you” (O 2.2). Critobulus finds this claim laughable at first, but Socrates explains to him that his own meager possessions are more than adequate for his modest needs, while Critobulus would require three times what he now possesses in order to meet the financial obligations of a man of pomp and reputation in the city. Besides, Socrates has wealthy friends who would be glad to help him out if he needed anything, while Critobulus’s friends all look to him as a source of benefits. At this Critobulus becomes even more discouraged and begs Socrates to “take command of me before I become really pitiable” (O 2.9). But Socrates puts him off with a promise, not to help him enrich his household, but to point out to him those in the city who are much cleverer than Socrates in those things that Critobulus persists in wanting to learn from him (O 2.16). Accordingly, Socrates offers to introduce Critobulus to competent practitioners of each of the kinds of knowledge embraced by household

12

Adam Schulman

management (O 3.16). Critobulus, evidently exhausted by even the thought of all the arts he might need to master, implores Socrates to limit himself to “the kinds of knowledge that are reputed to be the noblest and that would be especially suitable for my concern” (O 4.1). Socrates thereupon agrees to “repudiate the mechanical arts” (O 6.5) which ruin men’s bodies and enervate their souls, and to imitate instead the king of Persia, who is said to concern himself emphatically with two arts that are among the noblest and most necessary, viz., farming and the art of war (O 4.4). Let it be noted that, while it was Critobulus who steered the conversation toward the noblest arts involved in household management, it was Socrates who suggested that Critobulus should model his conduct on the king of Persia, that is, the despotic ruler of a vast empire and no stranger to war and tyranny. Critobulus doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that he should imitate the king by learning the art of war, but he is extremely skeptical that the king is in any way a practitioner of the art of farming. Ostensibly to allay his doubts on this score Socrates tells the story of an encounter between Cyrus the Younger (i.e., Xenophon’s friend and comrade-in-arms) and Lysander, the great Spartan naval commander whose fleet finally defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War. It was this Cyrus who is said to have received Lysander with many marks of friendship when he came bringing presents from the allies—as Lysander himself once said in relating the story to a certain host in Megara—and in particular, he said, he displayed to him the pleasure garden (paradeisos) in Sardis. After Lysander had wondered at it—that the trees should be so beautiful, the plantings so regular, the rows of trees so straight, and everything so beautifully geometrical, and that so many pleasant scents should accompany them as they walked—wondering at these things, he spoke. “I, Cyrus, am full of wonder at the beauty of everything, but much more do I admire the one who has measured out and ordered each of these things for you.” On hearing this, Cyrus was pleased and spoke. “All these things, Lysander, I measured out and ordered myself, and there are some of them,” he said that he said, “that I even planted myself.” And Lysander said that, looking at him and seeing the beauty of the clothes he wore, perceiving their scent and also the beauty of the necklaces and bracelets and the other ornaments he was wearing, he had spoken and said: “What do you mean, Cyrus? You planted some of these with your own hands?” And Cyrus had replied, “Do you wonder at this, Lysander? I swear to you by Mithras: as long as I’m healthy, I never go to dinner until I have worked up a sweat either by practicing some work of war or farming, or at any rate by always devoting my ambition to some one thing.” And Lysander himself said that on hearing this he took Cyrus’s right hand and spoke: “You, Cyrus, seem to me to be justly happy, for you are happy while being a good man.” “This, Critobulus, I relate,” said Socrates, “because not even the altogether blessed can abstain from farming.” (O 4.20–5.1)

What Is a Gentleman?

13

The occasion for this exchange was evidently Lysander’s journey to Sardis in 407 B.C. in hopes of obtaining Persian assistance in the war against Athens (H 1.5.1ff.). Xenophon’s report of the conversation between the Persian Cyrus and the Greek Lysander is intended, I believe, to depict the architectonic encounter between what I shall call the tyrant and the gentleman. What is revealed in that encounter is the vast gulf between the moral outlook of the tyrant and that of the gentleman. In Xenophon’s terms, as we shall see, the issue between the tyrant and the gentleman concerns the good and the beautiful and how they contribute to human happiness. Let me explain. I believe it is fair to conjecture that each of the participants in this interview came away from it with a feeling of more or less amused contempt for the other. First consider Lysander’s point of view. From his perspective, the barbarian prince has tried to impress his Greek guest by parading before him the sumptuous luxuries of his pleasure garden. But Lysander, being a free man and a gentleman, is not about to be bowled over by the material possessions, however opulent, of an Asiatic despot. Surveying the beautiful gardens, Lysander points out, in effect, that the man who is truly admirable is not the owner of such treasures but the one who designed and constructed them. Mere wealth doesn’t entitle a man to respect, but talent and hard work do. If you want to get a gentleman to admire you, you have to do it the old-fashioned way and earn his approbation. All things being equal, a Persian despot is less praiseworthy than his own chief gardener. And with his Laconic bluntness, Lysander says as much directly to Cyrus’s face. Cyrus’s reaction, again from Lysander’s viewpoint, is itself rather contemptible. Abashed by this honest reproof from the bluff Spartan soldier, Cyrus tries to save face by boasting that he himself had a hand in designing, and even in planting, the pleasure garden of Sardis. Lysander thinks it’s enough to look at Cyrus’s gorgeous raiment and jewel-encrusted manicured hands to expose the absurdity of this petty white lie. But rather than boorishly contradict the already embarrassed barbarian, Lysander merely congratulates him ironically on being not only happy, but justly happy, since he has shown himself to be a good man who deserves to be happy. The encounter no doubt confirms Lysander’s opinion that barbarians, even or especially the richest and most powerful, simply do not understand what it means to be a gentleman. In particular, Cyrus fails to appreciate that beautiful clothes, jewelry, women, pleasure gardens, and so forth do not make a man genuinely admirable. Cyrus does not see that the beauty we should strive for above all is an inner beauty or nobility of soul that would make us worthy of the external goods in which Cyrus delights. Happiness, for the gentleman, is less a matter of having certain valuable things than of being a certain kind of person: noble, virtuous, and meritorious.

14

Adam Schulman

Now what about Cyrus’s view of this encounter? I suspect he has little patience for Lysander’s high-minded insistence that deserved happiness is superior to the mere possession of beautiful things. For Cyrus, the only beauty available to man is external beauty; once the necessities have been taken care of, our object here on earth is to make our lives as pleasant and satisfying as possible by acquiring as many beautiful things as we can; as Socrates puts it, In whatever country [the Persian king] resides, or wherever he travels, he is concerned that there be gardens, the paradeisoi as they are called, filled with all the beautiful and good things that the earth wishes to bring forth, and in these he himself spends most of his time, when the season of the year doesn’t prevent it. (O 4.13)

According to this viewpoint which I have been calling “tyrannical,” we cannot expect to become happy simply because we are deserving. More precisely, there is no nobility of soul that makes us worthy of happiness; there are only various talents and strengths that make us better at acquiring the necessary and beautiful things that contribute to a happy life. Happiness is more a matter of having than of being. As for Lysander’s tribute to the gardener, it is either invidious and hypocritical or pious and simple-minded. The good things in life are not earned; they are merely acquired. Why then does Cyrus react defensively to Lysander’s implicit rebuke? Why does he allow himself to be provoked into asserting that he, and not his gardener, deserves the credit for the beauty of his pleasure garden? Two possible answers come to mind. Perhaps Cyrus cares more about the opinion of others than he would like to admit and wants to win the approval of his Greek visitor even if he thinks him a hypocrite or a fool. On the other hand, it may simply be that Cyrus finds Lysander’s remarks tactless and discourteous and, to prevent further awkwardness, contrives to end the exchange in a way that saves face for both of them. After all, a barbarian who has little sympathy for Greek notions of inner moral virtue might, for that very reason, have a finely developed taste for polite manners, diplomatic tact, and graceful repartée. Incidentally, in light of the Cyrus-Lysander exchange, one begins to understand why Xenophon, as a serious student of Socrates, might have been interested in getting to know Cyrus personally. I have dwelt at length on this exchange out of a sense that it serves a much deeper purpose than merely to convince Critobulus that “even the altogether blessed cannot abstain from farming” (O 4.25). As we are shortly to discover, Socrates, too, at a certain point in his life, became deeply interested in the question that divided Lysander and Cyrus, namely what is the place of the beautiful and the good in human happiness? In order to fulfill his promise to acquaint Critobulus with a really successful household manager, Socrates relates to him a conversation he had

What Is a Gentleman?

15

had long before with a rich and well-known gentleman by the name of Ischomachus. Now Ischomachus is introduced ostensibly as a prosperous household manager from whose practices Critobulus could learn some useful lessons. But Socrates also makes it clear that his encounter with Ischomachus marked a turning point in his own life, the beginning, in fact, of a new mode of philosophical inquiry, based on the persistent questioning of prominent members of various professions in Athens. Indeed, what we find here is essentially an explanation of the Socratic turn that in some respects parallels Socrates’s account of the turn in Plato’s Apology. But the points at which the two accounts diverge are rather striking: I admit that I have been diligent in finding those in the city who are most knowledgeable in each kind of thing. For on learning that among those who are in the same line of work some were very poor and others very rich, I was filled with wonder, and it seemed worthwhile to me to investigate why this should be. On investigating it, I found that these things happen quite properly. I saw those who act at random suffering loss, and I noticed that those who are diligent and apply their minds do things more quickly, more easily, and more profitably. From these, I suppose, you too could learn, if you wanted to and the god did not oppose you, how to become an extremely clever money-maker. (O 2.16–18)

A little later in the conversation Socrates tells Critobulus where this initially successful line of inquiry eventually led him: A very short time was sufficient for me to go around to the good carpenters, the good smiths, the good painters, the sculptors, and others like them, to see the works of theirs that were reputed to be beautiful. But as regards those who have the solemn name of gentleman (kalos k’agathos), that I might investigate whatever sort of work they do to be worthy of being called by it, my soul very much desired to come together with one of them. And first, because the “beautiful” (kalos) is added to the “good” (agathos), whenever I saw someone beautiful, I would go up to him and try to learn whether I could see the good connected to the beautiful. But this was not the case, for I seemed to learn that some of those who were beautiful in outward form were quite worthless (mochtheros) in their souls. It seemed best then to disregard the beautiful looks and to go instead to one of those called gentlemen (kaloi k’agathoi). Since I had heard Ischomachus named a gentleman by everyone—by men and women, foreigners and townsmen alike—it seemed best to try to come together with him. (O 6.13–17)

Instead of a search for human wisdom inspired by the Delphic oracle, Socrates here presents his dialectical inquiry as rooted in the sense of wonder aroused in him by the observation that people in the same line of work sometimes get rich and sometimes get poor. It is as if Socrates had opened the Wall Street Journal one morning only to discover, to his astonishment,

16

Adam Schulman

that in the same sector of the economy some companies flourish and some go under, and then had dedicated his life to questioning members of the professions in order to get to the bottom of this profound mystery. In any event, Socrates says he quickly found the explanation for the variability of profits earned in the same profession. The profitable enterprises are headed by competent, diligent businessmen; the ones that fail are run by incompetent idlers. Socrates’s model for the successful moneymaker is the skillful artisan who has a good (agathos) mind, which he puts to use making beautiful (kalos) products, which then command a high price in the marketplace. Socrates’s inquiry, whatever else we may think of it, has thus been an occasion for him to reflect on the good and the beautiful and their role in human flourishing and human failure. But in the course of his investigation, Socrates comes across a profession, or more properly a class of men, whose practices defy this straightforward analysis in terms of good minds and beautiful products. These are the men who call themselves, and are called by others, by the solemn name of “gentleman.” Now the Greek word which I have been translating as “gentleman” is actually a three-word phrase, kalos k’agathos, that is kalos kai agathos, “beautiful and good,” or perhaps “noble and good.” The word kalos can mean both beautiful in outward form and morally beautiful or noble; its range of meanings is roughly that of the English word “fair.” The word agathos is usually rendered as “good.” When applied to things it primarily means “beneficial” or “serviceable,” that is, “good for something.” When applied to persons it primarily means “capable” or “competent,” that is, “good at something,” as in the Homeric epithet for Menelaus, boen agathos Menelaos, that is, “Menelaus good at shouting.” But the gentleman does not fit neatly under this rubric of the other professions, first, because there is no beautiful artifact which the gentleman produces with his good mind, and, second, because the gentleman is himself called both beautiful and good in the same breath. But Socrates, as he tells it, was not daunted by these obscurities. In order to make sense of the class of gentlemen he hypothesized, in effect, that the gentleman is his own product. He supposed, in other words, that the gentlemen, i.e., the beautiful and good, are beautiful because they are good, that is, that they use their good minds to make their bodies beautiful, perhaps by an artful combination of gymnastics and cosmetics. And since beautiful bodies are more easily perceived than good minds, Socrates quite reasonably sought out the beautiful people and, by questioning them, tried to ascertain the quality of their minds. But, alas, his hypothesis was defeated, for he found that many of those whose bodies are beautiful have souls that are quite worthless. The word he uses is mochtheros, and it means wretched, miserable, worn out, in bad condition—the very opposite of agathos. It was then that Socrates realized that, in order to understand the

What Is a Gentleman?

17

phenomenon of “the gentleman,” he had to disregard the beautiful looks and instead try to have a conversation with someone who was believed to be a gentleman “by men and women, foreigners and townsmen alike.” And that is how he came to have a conversation with that perfect gentleman Ischomachus. Strange and even absurd as this narrative may seem, it does suggest some interesting points about Socrates and the life he led. To begin with, it is striking that Socrates, at least early on, seems to have held more or less the same view of the beautiful and the good as Cyrus exhibited in his encounter with Lysander. For Socrates, as for Cyrus, to kalon—“the beautiful”—is anything pleasing in outward form, whereas ho agathos—“the good man”—is a competent, capable, or skilled man. Of course it is possible to be handsome and capable at the same time; Cyrus is living proof of that. But when the gentleman calls himself kalos k’agathos, the beauty he is claiming is not that of outward form but an inner, moral nobility that makes him worthy of happiness. And it is this claim of the gentleman to be noble and therefore deserving that neither Cyrus nor Socrates can understand. The difference is that Socrates is not content merely to dismiss the gentleman as an idle dreamer; instead Socrates devotes much of his life to trying to understand the phenomenon of the gentleman: What is a gentleman? On what ground does he claim to be noble as well as good? What does it mean to be worthy of happiness? And what role does such worthiness to be happy play in a satisfying life? Furthermore, the discovery of “the gentleman” as a philosophical problem marks, for Socrates, the beginning of a new way of inquiry, a turn from the outward looks of things to the opinions men hold about themselves, the world, and their place in it. Socrates’s conversation with the gentleman Ischomachus, as narrated by Xenophon, is the start of the mature phase of Socratic philosophy. Prior to that conversation, Socrates appears to have been satisfied with an essentially economic and technical understanding of human life. Each of us wants to live as pleasantly and securely as possible; we all employ our mental capacities to acquire the good and beautiful things that make life satisfying. In essence, he supposed that a good man is a competent man, one who has mastered an art by which he acquires what he wants, for example, by producing beautiful artifacts that command a high price in the marketplace. But the phenomenon of the gentleman compelled Socrates to realize that he did not fully understand the human soul and its deepest motives— including perhaps his own soul. This is not to say that Socrates simply abandoned the view of the beautiful and the good that he held prior to his encounter with the gentleman. As we have seen, in his much later conversation with Critobulus he argues that household management, in the strict sense, encompasses the use, for one’s own advantage, of all things and persons, friends as well as enemies, by any

18

Adam Schulman

available means, including war and tyranny. This seems an invitation to practice the art of household management in the manner of the tyrannical rulers of the Persian empire, rather than the respectable gentlemen of Athens. But it is clear that Socrates does not practice this tyrannical art himself, however far he may be from the gentleman’s view of the proper limits of the household. Which brings us to the question, what did Socrates learn from his lengthy discussion with Ischomachus about household management? More precisely, what did he learn about the gentleman, and why is household management itself an important theme of his inquiry? Space does not permit us a detailed treatment of their conversation, which takes up more than twothirds of the Oeconomicus. But we can touch briefly on some of the main points. To begin with, it becomes clear that the gentleman embodies a particular type of moral outlook; he is neither a saint nor a despot but somewhere in between. As the word kalos k’agathos implies, the gentleman prides himself on being both noble and good, that is, morally upright but hardheaded enough to prosper in an imperfect world. The gentleman is sensible about how the world works and about the compromises that a prudent man must make in order to get by. He is not prone to moral indignation, for he is aware of how little others can be expected to practice virtue merely for virtue’s sake. Ischomachus, for example, knows that the city of Athens honors him as a gentleman in large part because he is rich and hence able to pay for a trireme or the training of a chorus when required to (O 7.3). He is also quite an admirer of the Persian king, who understands that men in general will act justly only if just conduct is rewarded with money (O 14.7). And Ischomachus manages his household staff on the Persian principle of “the master’s eye.” That is, “it is under the master’s eye that noble and good works are done” (O 12.20). The gentleman seems to be a kind of mean between the tyrannical cynicism of the Persian despot and the lofty sentiments of what Hegel, in his Phenomenology, calls “the beautiful soul.” It may be that Socrates is attracted to the gentleman as the most manly and impressive form of the moral attitude toward life. The gentleman is not a zealot or a moral visionary; he does not pretend to be too good for this world. Instead, he is able and willing to run a successful household or even to take responsibility for the welfare of a city. In short, he believes he has found a way to live honorably or decently while fully embracing the practical necessities of life. As the conversation with Ischomachus shows, the gentleman’s chief preoccupations, when he is not engaged by the needs of the city, are farming and superintending his household, which includes his wife, his housekeeper, his steward, and a variety of servants and slaves. The gentleman, as Ischomachus puts it, enlists the aid of his wife and staff “not only to keep

What Is a Gentleman?

19

their property in the best condition but also to add as much as possible to it by noble and just means” (O 7.15). While ostensibly educating Socrates about how this can be done, Ischomachus inadvertently reveals some of the unexamined presuppositions of the gentleman’s understanding of life. Socrates shows a keen interest in how Ischomachus educated his wife and his servants to be loyal and dedicated subordinates in the running of the household. In general, Ischomachus’s tone throughout these discussions is easygoing and self-satisfied. He expresses confidence that he knows how to teach others to be just, diligent, and devoted to his interests. Socrates, for his part, had supposed that “diligence is something that can in no way be taught” (O 12.10). Ischomachus seems convinced that god or nature has designed men and women with just the right qualities to enable them to work together in a harmonious household with the order and efficiency of a beehive (O 7.16–43). Socrates seems mildly skeptical in the face of this assurance, and careful questioning brings out some grounds for wondering whether Ischomachus’s household is as orderly and harmonious as he claims. We learn, for example, that Ischomachus is by no means sure of his wife’s loyalty or even of the superiority of his status in the household relative to hers (O 8–10, 11.25). And while Ischomachus at first expresses optimism that he can instill justice, diligence, and goodwill in the hearts of his servants (O 9.11–13, 12.4–20, 13.6–12, 14.2–10), by the end of the conversation he seems almost to despair of ever attaining rule over willing servants, as opposed to rule by compulsion. The dialogue ends with Ischomachus confessing that this good—to rule over willing subjects—is not altogether a human thing, but, rather, divine; it is clearly given only to those who have been genuinely initiated into the mysteries of moderation; but tyrannical rule over unwilling subjects, it seems to me, they give to those whom they believe worthy of living like Tantalus in Hades, who is said to spend unending time in fear of a second death. (O 21.12)

While discussing the education of servants Ischomachus says that some of them can be kept obedient only with bodily rewards and punishments; but there are some ambitious natures that are “as hungry for praise as others are for food and drink” (O 13.9). These, who can be induced to act justly by their desire for their master’s praise, Ischomachus says he “treats as free men, not only enriching them but honoring them as gentlemen” (O 14.9). This remarkable statement has the following implication: that there is no great difference between a gentleman and an ambitious servant who acts justly in his master’s household for the sake of praise and honor from his master. And this in turn invites the speculation that the gentleman himself, even though he is the master of one household, is in some ways also the

20

Adam Schulman

servant in another household. Perhaps, in other words, the gentleman himself does what is “noble and just” in order to win praise and honor from his master. But then what would be this larger household in which the gentleman serves as an ambitious steward, and who would be its master? In one sense, it appears, that household is the city, and the gentleman’s master is public opinion. But in a deeper sense, perhaps, the household is the whole world, understood as an orderly cosmos, and its masters are the gods who are believed to preside benevolently over that world, rewarding the noble and just and punishing the base and unjust. Now Ischomachus, in his discussion of household management, does seem to presuppose that as a gentleman he inhabits a world more or less of that sort. He expresses to Socrates a somewhat circumspect and qualified faith in divine providence: I seem to have learned that the gods do not by law permit human beings to prosper unless they know what they ought to do and are diligent in accomplishing it, and that nevertheless they grant only to some of the prudent and diligent to be happy, and not to others. (O 11.8)

Ischomachus also quotes with approval the theological musings of a certain Phoenician helmsman on the subject of storms and shipwrecks: The god threatens and punishes the slack. If only he doesn’t destroy those who have not gone wrong, one should be very content; and if he preserves those who serve very nobly, much gratitude, he said, is owed to the gods. (O 8.16)

In addition to these sober professions of faith, Ischomachus argues emphatically that farming, the most suitable occupation for gentlemen, is a noble and philanthropic art and most beloved of gods and men. Farming is pleasant and beneficial, it is the easiest profession to learn, and it builds good character in those who practice it, since it is open and honest, unlike the other arts which reward secrecy, cunning, and concealment (O 16.4–12). Success in farming, he almost suggests, is more a matter of good character than of intelligence; it is therefore proof of the gods’ philanthropy, that is, of their benevolent intent to provide us with a natural world in which gentlemen can honorably flourish. If the opinions of Ischomachus are a reliable guide, the gentleman’s way of life presupposes that the world is a kind of cosmic household, ruled by benevolent masters, with gentlemen as their ambitious stewards. Here we begin to see why the question of household management would be of central importance for philosophy. For that question, taken in its largest sense, is identical to the question, what is the nature of the world we live in? Is it a chaos or some kind of cosmos? If it is a cosmos, on what principles is it ordered? Are we the masters or are we stewards, or perhaps even slaves? Is

What Is a Gentleman?

21

the cosmos presided over by powerful and intelligent beings, and, if so, what interest do they take in human affairs? Are they indifferent to our conduct and our fate, or do they reward the deserving and punish the wicked? And what part does their providence play in the happiness that is available to human beings? Now, the gentleman, unlike the philosopher, does not spend much time investigating these questions. He is either satisfied with the answers he has, or he is content to live with certain kinds of ignorance; at any rate he turns his attention to other concerns. The philosopher may not have the answers, but neither is he content merely to live in ignorance. He believes that a life spent investigating these questions is the best and most satisfying life available to him. And he passes some of his time in conversation with gentlemen, in part in order to test and confirm his judgment that philosophy is the best way of life for a human being.

NOTES 1. Primary sources used in this chapter are abbreviated in text as follows: L Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers AC Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus O Xenophon, Oeconomicus M Xenophon, Memorabilia XA Xenophon, Apology H Xenophon, Hellenica A Plato, Apology SL Plato, Second Letter P Plato, Parmenides 2. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1969), 53. 3. Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal), quoted in Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Penguin, 1990), §39.

2 Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship Joseph Reisert

Xenophon presents Socrates and Cyrus the Great as exemplars of the alternative candidates for the best way of life known to classical philosophy: philosophy and political rule. Nevertheless, Xenophon’s portraits of these exemplary men also reveal a sufficient number of similarities in their characters and ways of life to suggest that he perceived a deep commonality linking the two ways of life they embody. This essay explores one of the most remarkable affinities between Cyrus and Socrates: their facility at attracting friends and benefiting them. Although Socrates’s practice of friendship emerges as superior to Cyrus’s, Xenophon’s account suggests that neither philosophy nor rule is fully compatible with the best form of friendship and thus provides a partial vindication of the gentlemanly existence he himself chose to live. Although Leo Strauss correctly maintains that Cyrus and Socrates represent “opposite poles of Xenophon’s ‘moral universe,’”1 the similarities between the two figures have led many other scholars to virtually identify Xenophon’s philosopher and his king. Thus, for example, Vivienne Gray presents Cyrus as “a Socratic wise man of power”2; Bodil Due observes that Socrates and Cyrus “to a high degree possess the same virtues and moral ideals”3; and Deborah Levine Gera sees in Cyrus a “philosopher king.”4 James Tatum writes that Xenophon’s account in the Cyropaedia reads “as if Socrates were given the role of Cyrus the Younger.”5 There are, indeed, many commonalities in Xenophon’s portraits of Cyrus and Socrates. Both teach the importance of moderation with respect to the bodily pleasures of food, drink, and sex; and both practice the virtue of moderation they preach. Both articulate similar doctrines toward the gods, holding it is “unlawful” to “consult divination regarding matters the gods 23

24

Joseph Reisert

gave to human beings to decide by learning,” and Xenophon represents both men as acting accordingly (Mem. 1.1.9; compare Cyr. 1.6.6).6 Both express substantially identical doctrines regarding the duties of a general, explicitly asserting that “household management” is among the skills required of a military leader, though of course only Cyrus actually has occasion to put this teaching into practice (Mem. 3.4.11–12; compare Cyr. 1.6.12–13).7 Cyrus embraces the Socratic doctrine that the best way to appear prudent about anything is really to be so (Cyr. 1.6.22; compare Mem. 1.7), and he puts this doctrine into practice during his ascent to power and subsequent reign, becoming expert at riding, generalship, and all the arts of war (Cyr. 8.1.34–39).8 In sum, Xenophon shows us that both Cyrus and Socrates live their lives completely, and intelligently, devoted to their dominant ends, rule, and knowledge, respectively; nothing ever distracts either one from the pursuit of his dominant end.9 He affirms that Cyrus ruled “with knowledge” (Cyr. 1.1.3), and that Socrates was “always conversing about human things . . . knowledge of which he believed makes one a gentleman” (Mem. 1.1.16). All the virtues they share derive from and reflect their wholehearted and single-minded attachment to their ends; the differences, naturally, arise from the divergence between those ends. Finally, that Xenophon presents Cyrus’s death in a way that strongly recalls the death of Socrates, but diverges sharply from the accounts given by Herodotus and Ctesias, who claim he fell in battle, also seems to invite reflection upon the similarities between the careers of Cyrus and Socrates.10 It is typically supposed that the similarities between the teachings and actions of Cyrus and Socrates reflect an intention on Xenophon’s part to endorse both ways of life as fully choiceworthy. The present essay explores the alternative possibility—that the defects that become apparent in Cyrus’s way of life also point toward aspects of Socrates’s life that prove to be more questionable and therefore less choiceworthy than they at first appear. In considering that possibility, we focus on the relationships of Cyrus and Socrates to their followers and friends. To the similarities between the philosopher and king already noted, we must add that Xenophon depicts both men speaking a good deal about friendship, and seeking to acquire friends, or helping others to acquire them. Although both speak of friendship in frequently utilitarian terms,11 both men also exerted an extraordinary attraction over their closest friends, making these prefer them even to their own fathers (Mem. 1.2.52; compare Cyr. 3.1.42-43, 8.2.8).

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF CYRUS Although Xenophon’s Cyrus engages in philosophical discussion when it suits his purposes, he undertakes no theoretical discussion of friendship

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

25

akin to the extended analysis of friendship in the Socratic conversations recorded in Memorabilia 2.4–10. Instead, Xenophon depicts Cyrus as constantly seeking, and easily acquiring, the friendship of those whom he encounters. As a child, Cyrus wins to himself the affection of the whole Median court, and as an adult, he secures the friendship of neutral foreigners such as Tigranes the Armenian prince, of former enemies, such as the Assyrian nobles Gobryas and Gatatas, and Croesus of Lydia, and even preserves the friendship of his uncle Cyaxares, whose rule over the Medes he in effect usurps. What little Xenophon presents Cyrus as saying about friendship reveals that his understanding bears at least a passing similarity to Aristotle’s account. Conversing with his father, before assuming command of the Persian army, Cyrus announces that he will win the affection of his subjects in the same way that he acquires the affection of friends: through being “evident in doing good for them” (Cyr. 1.6.24). His father adds, and he accepts, that when he cannot confer benefits on those whose goodwill he would secure, he should demonstrate goodwill in return, for example by sharing in their grieving and rejoicing, by demonstrating forethought on their behalf, and by sharing visibly and eagerly in their labors (Cyr. 1.6.24–15; compare also: Cyr. 8.2.1).12 Later, after having established his empire, Cyrus describes his practice of friendship to Croesus in similar terms: “by enriching and benefiting human beings, I acquire goodwill and friendship” (Cyr. 8.2.22). Cyrus, in short, conceives that friendship is constituted by the reciprocated and willing exchange of benefits. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle specifies three conditions for the existence of friendship: the friend must exhibit goodwill to his friend (i.e., he must wish that his friend receive good things); this goodwill must be reciprocated; and each must know of the other’s reciprocated goodwill.13 However, Aristotle distinguishes three species of friendship corresponding to the three causes of affection and goodwill: the useful, the pleasant, and the good. In Aristotle’s account, the best or “complete” friendship is the friendship of two friends who exhibit reciprocal affection and goodwill, based on their esteem for one another’s good character. This character-friendship is best because only one who loves his friend’s good character can be truly said to love his friend for his own sake, and it is complete because such friendships will also be pleasant and advantageous to the friends (NE 1156b7–18). Aristotle regards the other forms of friendship as decidedly inferior to the complete friendship of two friends alike in good character. Friendships of pleasure Aristotle associates with the young, who are readily led by their feelings, and who easily become infatuated with companions in whose company they take pleasure, but these friendships are typically transient, as are the feelings which inspire them (NE 1156a32–b5). Still less do friendships for utility, in which the friends love one other, “not in himself, but in

26

Joseph Reisert

so far as they gain some good for themselves,” resemble complete friendships (NE 1156a10). Indeed, Aristotle proceeds to argue that such friends may not in fact exhibit goodwill for one another at all. He observes, reasonably enough, that “those who wish for another’s welfare because they hope to enrich themselves through him would seem to have goodwill to themselves, rather than to him” (NE 1167a16–17). By contrast, genuine goodwill toward another is prompted by the recognition of a certain excellence in that person, which attracts us and inspires in us the desire to see that person prosper (NE 1167a18–20).14 To evaluate Cyrus’s practice of friendship, therefore, requires careful attention to the goods he wishes for his friends and his reasons for wishing them, and to the goods and the nature of the affection he seeks from them in return. Cyrus’s eager pursuit of friends begins during his youthful stay at his grandfather’s court in Media, long before the start of his military career. Although Xenophon’s account of this episode occupies only two chapters, the small incidents of Cyrus’s childhood comically prefigure the serious and even tragic, great events of his adulthood. At his initial appearance in the narrative, we see Cyrus as a boy of “twelve or a bit more” affectionately greeting his grandfather, Astyages, at their very first meeting (Cyr. 1.3.1). Recognizing, perhaps, that pre-adolescent boys do not commonly show much affection for elderly relatives, even when these are well-known to them, Xenophon explains that Cyrus “was by nature an affectionate boy” as well as “a lover of beauty and of honor” (Cyr. 1.3.2–3). The charming twelve-year-old Cyrus exhibits a youthful warmth and love of beauty and pleasure that is later substantially eclipsed by the calculating ambition of the “cold king” he subsequently becomes (Cyr. 8.4.22–23). At first it appears that Cyrus’s childhood relationships are best understood as friendships for pleasure, which Aristotle regards as typical of the young. Cyrus, being himself affectionate, spares no effort to become his grandfather’s favorite, eagerly seeking every opportunity to demonstrate his affection for him and to please him by cheerfully and promptly performing whatever service he might need (Cyr. 1.3.12; 1.4.2). He wins the affection of his age-mates, too, by sharing in their games and competitions, demonstrating enthusiasm for their activities and good humor both in his successes and his failures. In his early years in Media, Xenophon describes him as “puppyish” and eagerly “running up to all alike;” after puberty, he is said to be “gentler but altogether charming in his associations” (Cyr. 1.4.4). Throughout his time among the Medes, he is generous with gifts and with his praise, freely recognizing the virtues of others—even, as appropriate, acknowledging the superiority of others’ virtues to his own (Cyr. 1.4.6; 1.4.15). Xenophon, however, also reveals a darker undercurrent to Cyrus’s childhood friendships. As becomes evident in his conversation with his mother,

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

27

Cyrus understands very well that in the absolute monarchy of Media, his uncle is “master of everything” and that his will, not the law, rules (Cyr. 1.3.18). With the affection of Astyages comes power, and Cyrus charmingly but effectively uses the gifts he receives from his grandfather in order to flatter and gratify his age-mates and some of the adults at court as well. Through his intercession with his grandfather the king, he wins favors for his friends’ fathers, earning the attachment of both sons and fathers to himself (Cyr. 1.4.1). Cyrus’s benefactions are not only pleasurable to bestow and to receive, but also advantageous, not least to Cyrus himself, who begins to enjoy some of the satisfaction associated with the exercise of arbitrary power. His ascendancy over Astyages extends so far that, despite his fears for his grandson’s safety, Astyages gratifies his desire to hunt wild game, ordering his son, Cyaxares, to lead the expedition; recognizing the boy’s standing with the king, Cyaxares finds himself unable to discipline his nephew for his recklessness during the hunt, telling him, ruefully: “Do what you wish, for it looks like you are now our king” (Cyr. 1.4.9).15 Cyrus’s boyhood “kingship” prefigures his subsequent imperial rule and his eventual usurpation of Cyaxares’s rule over the Medes. Xenophon judges that, during the period of Cyrus’s “rule” over the Medes, he was “for all a cause of pleasure and of some good, but of nothing bad” (Cyr. 1.4.15), inviting the question whether Cyrus would become a cause of pain and of other bad things during his rule over the Persian Empire. That Cyrus is, in this way, acknowledged as “king” by the legitimate heir further supports the conclusion that although Cyrus’s boyhood friendships have the appearance of being pleasure-friendships, they are, for Cyrus at least, friendships for the sake of his own advantage. Even at this early point in the narrative, it may reasonably be asked whether Cyrus ever exhibits genuine goodwill for his comrades and friends or whether he only ever displays a calculating concern to promote his own advantage by gaining followers. In the first public address he delivers after being recognized as “king,” he shares with the boys the meat from his first wild-game hunt and fires them with the noble ambition to hunt with him in the wild, as if they were men, rather than children and “triflers” (Cyr. 1.4.11). This address to the boys prefigures his first speech as a man to the Persian peers, both in that Xenophon presents the hunting of wild beasts as a peacetime substitute for the practice of war (Cyr. 1.6.28–29) and in that both speeches combine appeals to the advantageous and the noble (Cyr. 1.5.6–13). By means of this speech, he creates a community of boys united by their eagerness to demonstrate their virtue in a real hunt and to eat the wild game they kill. By means of the later speech, he assembles an army of men united by their desire to conquer their enemies and to profit from the virtues that will bring them victory. In both speeches, he inflames his auditors’ preexisting desires for good things and reveals himself as uniquely able to provide them.

28

Joseph Reisert

After his speech to the boys, Cyrus experiences the sole crisis of leadership he ever endures: swearing by Hera, he confesses that he fears asking Astyages to allow the hunt. Stung by the boys’ suggestion that they may find someone else to lead them if he cannot deliver what he has induced them to desire, Cyrus resolves to endure whatever unpleasantness is required and to win his grandfather’s consent to his plan. He first attempts to persuade Astyages, who praises the nobility of his forthrightness but refuses his request; when that fails, he acts shamefully, sulking and moping about the palace until his grandfather relents and grants his wish (Cyr. 1.4.13). Never again in the Cyropaedia does Cyrus hesitate to do what is necessary—even to do things that no gentleman would consider (see, e.g., Cyr. 7.1.49)—to confer promised benefits to his followers; never again is his leadership seriously questioned. As W. R. Newell shrewdly observes, Cyrus’s rule over his army and subsequent empire fits neither Xenophon’s Socratic definition of kingship (“rule over human beings who are willing and according to law”) nor his parallel definition of tyranny (“rule over the unwilling and not according to laws” [Mem. 4.6.12]), but rather represents an alternative to both of these: “rule over willing subjects without law.”16 Such a regime could, in principle, be more just than the rule of law, since a wise ruler would be free to give individual merit its due in every particular case, unconstrained by the necessary generality of the law.17 Such a regime could also, in principle, be sustained by a kind of friendship between rulers and ruled: the ruled offer their willing obedience to the guidance of a ruler whose benevolence and superior wisdom inspires them with goodwill for him; the progress of the ruled in their cultivation of virtue, in turn, inspires the wise leader with the goodwill for them that motivates his benevolent rule. In practice, however, Cyrus’s rule, at least over his rank-and-file followers, bears little relationship to this idealized portrait of a regime based on a friendship that transcends legal justice. Although Cyrus works hard to appear to his followers as a friend, and though his apparent benevolence and his evident virtues (many of which are also genuine) indeed inspire a measure of goodwill, especially in his early followers, Cyrus’s rule over his army increasingly relies on fear. That fear remains in the background as long as his personal interests and those of the army remain linked through the existence of a common enemy; Cyrus recognizes that “common risks make allies friendly-minded, and in this situation they no longer envy either those who adorn themselves in their arms or those who desire reputation” (Cyr. 3.3.10). Even the appearance of friendship between Cyrus and his army fades, in the end, as he arranges a new security force of eunuchs, who had never served in the conquering army, to protect himself from possible insurrection.

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

29

It may be objected, however, that Cyrus’s friendships with his leading followers cannot be characterized in the same terms as his relationships with the vast number of his ordinary followers. The leaders in Cyrus’s meritocratic army are precisely those who possess and demonstrate the greatest virtues. If any of Cyrus’s friendships are to be accounted complete friendships, as Aristotle conceived them—the friendships of two men alike in virtue—the leading candidate must be his friendship with Tigranes, who, having associated in his youth with a teacher like Socrates, may represent the “alter ego” of Xenophon in the Cyropaedia.18 Tigranes had been a hunting companion and friend of Cyrus’s youth (Cyr. 3.1.7). He encounters Cyrus again after Cyrus has defeated his father, the king of Armenia, and taken prisoner the rest of the king’s entourage, including Tigranes’s wife; Tigranes who had been traveling during his father’s unsuccessful rebellion, remained at liberty. As Tigranes arrives, Cyrus puts the king on trial, quickly extracting from him the admission that, were he in Cyrus’s position, he would kill the disobedient subordinate and replace him with another. Seeing his father unable to defend himself any further, Tigranes asks Cyrus’s leave to speak; recollecting that Tigranes had spent time with “a certain wise man,” Cyrus “very much desired to hear what he would say” (Cyr. 3.1.14). Despite his Socratic education, Tigranes fails to persuade Cyrus that it would be just to return his father to power; he succeeds in this goal only by appealing to Cyrus’s interest, noting that no one but his father could so effectively raise the troops and money he needs to continue his military campaign. Thus persuaded, Cyrus treats the king generously: he releases his family unconditionally, demands payment, with interest, of the tribute due Cyaxares, and accepts men and money for the king so that he may do some good for the Armenians. As a consequence of this encounter, Tigranes decides to follow Cyrus, declaring, “I will not leave you, Cyrus, even if I must tag along as a camp follower” (Cyr. 3.1.43). Tigranes has evidently been won over by his admiration for Cyrus’s combination of military prowess and skill in argument; full of what Aristotle calls “the wish for friendship,” he desires to live with Cyrus and makes no mention of the good things he might expect to receive as a reward at the completion of a successful campaign (NE 1156b30).19 In this way, his friendship with Cyrus arises as a potential character-friendship; at this juncture, too, Cyrus demonstrates a certain interest in Tigranes’s character, as he inquires after the fate of “that man who used to hunt with us,” whom he perceived Tigranes to have admired (Cyr. 3.1.38). Although their rekindled friendship seems at first to rest on the firmest possible ground—mutual respect for one another’s virtues, Xenophon’s subsequent references to Tigranes suggest that his friendship with Cyrus never reaches fruition but rather withers gradually. Tigranes appears only

30

Joseph Reisert

occasionally in the narrative, always as a loyal supporter and willing follower of Cyrus, but they are never again presented as especially intimate. At the crucial juncture, when Cyrus wishes to continue the war against the wishes of Cyaxares, who, as King of the Medes, by right commands the army, Tigranes agrees to follow Cyrus with the same alacrity as the Persians (Cyr. 4.2.9). At the meeting of Cyrus’s “chief aides” about what to do after the first pair of great victories over the Assyrian army, Tigranes tells Cyrus never to be surprised if he is silent, because his “soul has been made ready . . . to do whatever you order” (Cyr. 5.1.27). Those are the last words of his recounted by Xenophon, though he appears five times more in the narrative. Tigranes’s attachment to Cyrus is never total, however: he brings his wife with him on the campaign, and she remains with him until Cyrus has established the seat of his empire at Babylon, after which Xenophon says no more about them (Cyr. 8.4.24). Although Xenophon only intimates the cooling of Tigranes’s friendship for Cyrus, he reveals the true character of Cyrus’s friendship for his closest followers when he describes the principles according to which Cyrus governs his empire. That account demonstrates the radical incompatibility between a life devoted entirely to ruling and any sort of genuine friendship with others. After describing Cyrus’s arrangements for securing his empire, Xenophon notes starkly that Cyrus perceives that it is his strongest followers—whom Xenophon has heretofore called Cyrus’s “friends”—who pose the greatest risk to him: he needs their assistance to rule the empire, so he cannot take their power from them, nor can he keep them away from his person or in any other way move openly against them. He concludes, therefore, that he must make his strongest followers “more friendly to himself than to each other” (Cyr. 8.1.48). Xenophon recounts in the following chapter the strategies Cyrus employs to accomplish this result (Cyr. 8.2).20 What is striking about these strategies is that they are the same ones (except for one only) that he has been employing since childhood to cultivate the affection of his followers. First, he demonstrates benevolence to all. Secondly, to win friends without expending money, he demonstrates goodwill by considering how to contrive good things for his friends and by sharing in their joys and griefs (Cyr. 8.2.2). Third, when he is able, he shares food from his table and makes such generous presents of money, land, and other good things that he “is said to make people prefer him to their brothers, their fathers, and to their children” (Cyr. 8.2.7). The presents he makes of food from his table are, naturally, prized for their gastronomic value, but they are also a relatively inexpensive way of indicating to his followers their relative status in his favor and thus of encouraging them to compete with one another to improve their standing in relation to the other followers.21 By distributing gifts to those who provide him information he ought to hear or to know, he creates

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

31

a network of “eyes and ears of the king”—making people “everywhere” (including, therefore, those in the palaces of his closest followers), fear to say or do what they would not wish him to see or overhear (Cyr. 8.2.10). To his greatest followers, he naturally gives the greatest gifts of lands, palaces, and fortunes. By thus distributing his fortune, he avoids being envied for hoarding every good thing for himself and more securely provides for his own needs in the future. Although these gifts to his friends appear as acts of the greatest munificence, the properties thus given are retained by their owners only at the pleasure of Cyrus himself (see Cyr. 8.1.17–20), which explains the alacrity with which his followers offer to provide Cyrus with as many resources as are at their disposal when he asks them for money (Cyr. 8.2.15–23). This is, of course, precisely the procedure Cyrus had adopted with the Armenian king, with whom it had produced the same result (Cyr. 3.1.42). Throughout his career, Cyrus had encouraged his followers to compete in contests designed to stimulate them to excellence. Xenophon notes that these contests accomplished two useful purposes for Cyrus: he earned the reputation of encouraging virtue, and the contests created “strife” amongst “the best” (Cyr. 8.2.26; compare Mem. 4.2.21). Only at the end of the chapter does Xenophon describe a practice Cyrus had not previously employed. He contrived that when his followers were in a dispute, the parties would have to choose the judges who would settle the controversy, guaranteeing that the loser would be dissatisfied with the judges, while the winners would not be especially gratified, having received only what they regarded as their due (Cyr. 8.2.27). The cumulative effects of these policies were that “those who wish to be first in Cyrus’s friendship would also be envious of one another, and consequently most of them wished one another to be simply out of the way rather than do anything for their mutual good” (Cyr. 8.2.28). In actuality, Cyrus is a friend to no one. The good he does for his closest followers is done, not out of regard for their well-being, but for his own interests. In the process of conferring good things upon his friends, he manages to make his companions radically dependent upon him yet divided against one another. Remarkably, he preserves through it all the reputation of being an excellent friend and benefactor, and in his dying breath says farewell to his present and absent friends (Cyr. 8.7.28).22 Although Cyrus conceives friendship in instrumental terms, he nevertheless succeeds—at least during his ascent to power—in inspiring extravagant affection in his followers. Leslie Rubin aptly observes that “Cyrus engages in an extended deception which makes [his subjects] fall in love with him. He makes himself appear beautiful, both physically and by displays of great deeds, so that his people find him irresistible.”23 The love he inspires, however, is better characterized as philia than eros, as Rubin contends.24

32

Joseph Reisert

Cyrus’s considerable genuine talents enable him to present himself as the sort of excellent and beneficial gentleman whom other gentlemen should wish to befriend for the sake of his virtues. But his apparent virtues ultimately prove hollow. He confides to Croesus that he is not moderate at all: he is “insatiable for money, just as others are” (Cyr. 8.2.20). He is, rather, a perfect calculator and ruthlessly subordinates short-term concerns to his long-term interest. He is always prepared to defer present gratification to acquire more “friends,” more resources, and more power in the future. Xenophon’s Cyropaedia presents in the most vivid manner possible what it would mean to satisfy completely Hobbes’s “restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”25 On his deathbed, Cyrus declares that he “recognized [his] power to be always on the increase” and that he never “undertook or desired anything that [he] did not obtain” (Cyr. 8.7.6). He was, therefore, in Hobbes’s sense, perfectly happy, having satisfied all his desires.26 Xenophon, however, does not call him happy.

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF SOCRATES Socrates’s lengthy discussion of friendship in book 2 of the Memorabilia has a strangely utilitarian cast for someone who insists that he is “erotic” and always in love (Mem. 2.6.28).27 Thus, for example, Christopher Bruell has observed, “Xenophon and his Socrates were willing to use the term ‘friend’ rather loosely” to include relationships based on the reciprocal exchange of benefits—that is, advantage-friendships, according to Aristotle’s conception.28 In the Memorabilia, Xenophon’s Socrates speaks frequently about the acquisition of friends, asks about their usefulness and monetary value (Mem. 4.2.5), and indeed points out to a certain Diodorus that “because of the present state of affairs one can acquire good friends very cheaply” (Mem. 2.10.4). Xenophon’s introductory remarks suggest, however, that the apparent utilitarianism of Socrates’s understanding of friendship derives from Socrates’s desire to say things to his interlocutors that would be “especially beneficial regarding the acquisition and treatment of friends;” Socrates begins with the idea that friends are primarily to be understood in terms of the benefits they provide one another because “he heard from many people that a good friend is the best of all possessions” (Mem. 2.4.1). In the conversations that follow, Socrates begins where his interlocutors do, with their desire to have and acquire useful friends. But Socrates quickly discovers that many people who say that they value friends as their most important possession nevertheless do not act in accordance with this opinion, “neglecting their friends who were in need of attention” though not neglecting to care for other possessions (Mem. 2.4.3). Nor do they even know the number of

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

33

their friends: “even when they attempted to count them for those who inquired, they included some among their friends whom they later excluded” (Mem. 2.4.6). The deep difficulty, of course, is to judge well enough the character of one’s companions to know whom to count as a true friend, but that issue is not pursued here.29 Xenophon’s Socrates concedes that there is some truth to this instrumental conception of friendship, saying, “for the good friend orders himself to remedy every deficiency of his friend, both in private equipment and in collective actions: should there be a need to treat someone well, he lends support, and if any fear disturbs him, he comes to his aid—sometimes helping him with expenditures, other times helping him with actions, and sometimes helping him persuade, other times using force, delighting them the most when they do well, and setting them right the most when they falter” (Mem. 2.4.6). The question remains, however: how does one keep and attract a true friend? In the next chapter, Socrates encounters the impoverished Antisthenes, complaining about his having been neglected by a friend. Socrates explains that he is inquiring “whether, just as household servants, so friends too have a worth” (Mem. 2.5.2). Antisthenes eagerly answers that he does indeed set different monetary values on friends and potential friends. Socrates turns the reply back upon Antisthenes, suggesting that some friends might be tempted to dispose of “a worthless friend when it is possible to get more than he is worth.”30 Perhaps he has been abandoned because his friendship is worth little to others. With Critobulus, Socrates begins by asking after the qualities one would seek in a friend. Even someone with an instrumental conception of friendship would agree, as Critobulus quickly agrees, that he should stay away from those who are incontinent with respect to bodily pleasures, from spendthrifts, from the excessively acquisitive, from the factious, and from those who will not reciprocate good deeds (Mem. 2.6.1–5). Obviously, one should seek as a friend someone who possesses the opposite virtues, “so that he is profitable to those who deal with him” (Mem. 2.6.5). Still interested primarily in how he can find such a useful friend for himself, Critobulus asks how such friends are to be “hunted” (Mem. 2.6.8). Socrates rejects the idea, implicit in the metaphor of the hunt, that friends can be gained by violence or deception (Mem. 2.6.9). He suggests, however, that there may be “incantations” and “love charms” useful for acquiring friends. Praise is one such incantation, which makes the hearer well disposed to the listener (compare Mem. 2.3.14, 3.11.17). Even Critobulus sees the difficulty here, and Socrates at once confirms his suspicions. Praise will not attract friendship if it is not believable. Someone who knows he is short, ugly, and weak will take himself to be ridiculed, not praised, if he is told he is tall, handsome, and strong (Mem. 2.6.13). The other way to win friends—the only way that can in fact succeed—is to do genuinely good deeds for the person

34

Joseph Reisert

one wishes to befriend. Critobulus perceives that this possibility requires those seeking friends “to become good at speaking and taking action” (Mem. 2.6.14). Having led Critobulus to perceive that the only genuinely advantageous friendship is a friendship of those who are alike in good character, Socrates encounters an objection. Critobulus grants that the wicked cannot be friends to one another, nor will the good befriend the wicked, but he despairs also of the possibility that those who are useful, noble, and good— the gentlemen—can be friends to one another (Mem. 2.6.16). As is clear from the reply, Socrates had anticipated the objection. In real-world politics, not all gentlemen are allies; sometimes they deal harshly with one another in factional strife (Mem. 2.6.17). Socrates responds to Critobulus’s worry in a long speech (Mem. 2.6.21–29) that does not entirely respond to the stated concern. Socrates explains (in Mem. 2.6.21) that both the causes of friendship and those of enmity are natural, arising from our imperfection—literally, our lack of selfsufficiency. “By nature” human beings “need one another and have pity and confer benefits as coworkers and, perceiving this, are grateful to one another.” Enmity in a way also arises from our partiality because those who agree on what is best and most pleasant become rivals while those who disagree over these things quarrel. Socrates somewhat cryptically suggests that rivalry over the acknowledged good and disagreement about the good are causes of quarrel only for those of imperfect virtue. Rivalry seems to arise among those who exhibit an “erotic desire to acquire an excess” because those of great virtue would nobly share; and bitter disputes over the good may be prompted by “envy” because each party to the disagreement refuses to concede to the other that he has presented the superior argument (compare Mem. 3.9.8). “Nevertheless,” Socrates continues, “friendship unites those who are both noble and good”—that is, gentlemen. The balance of his speech demonstrates that gentlemen, if they are moderate enough not to be divided by rivalry, and wise enough (or sufficiently well educated by someone wiser than they) not to quarrel over the good, should be most useful to one another in war and in peace. Xenophon’s Socrates does not mention the possibility that someone so wise as to be proof against the vices leading to quarrel might also be so wise as to be self-sufficient, at least with respect to the most important things, and so have no need of particular friends. Socrates’s speech culminates in his declaration that he is erotic: he wishes that all those whom he loves, longs for, and wishes to be with will equally love, long for, and wish to be with him. He confesses that he is “not inexperienced in the hunting of human beings” and offers to help Critobulus in his quest for friends (Mem. 2.6.28–29). Critobulus has, however, missed the point of Socrates’s oration and asks whether Socrates’s knowledge will help

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

35

him find success with the good-looking men he would like to kiss (Mem. 2.6.32–33). It now appears that Socrates’s argument in the first part of the conversation had missed its mark. Critobulus does not begin with a conception of friendship as useful; his conception of friendship is based on pleasure. With an argument parallel to that presented in the first part, Socrates argues that he will be able to help Critobulus win the affection of the attractive and good men he desires by praising him to them. But he will only praise Critobulus for qualities he actually possesses, lest the praise be discovered as false and the friendship it engendered poisoned into enmity. Just as the first segment of the argument led to the conclusion that one who wishes to have a useful friend must himself cultivate the virtues and become capable of character-friendship, so also does this final segment of the argument lead to the conclusion that one who wishes to have a truly beautiful friend must himself cultivate the virtues and become capable of conferring genuine benefits on his friend and being grateful for the benefits he receives from his friend in their common work. This conclusion leads to the question: in what common work is Socrates engaged with his interlocutors? Is he, according to his own definition, a friend of his companions? Xenophon insists that “there was nothing more beneficial than being a companion of Socrates” (Mem. 4.1.1); to establish this proposition was said to be the aim of the larger portion of the work (Mem. 1.3.1). Xenophon certainly shows that Socrates gave some of his companions good advice, leading to tangible improvements in their condition. On Socrates’s advice, Aristarchus encourages his dependent relatives to work to support the household, with good results (Mem. 2.7). He teaches Crito to free himself from sycophants by befriending a poor, young orator who would bring counter-accusations against those bringing actions against Crito—again, with good results for Crito and his friend, Archidemus (Mem. 2.9). If, however, the project Socrates engages in with his auditors is for he and they together “to become as good as possible” (Mem. 4.8.6; see e.g., Mem. 1.4.1, 1.6.9, 2.6.37, 3.9.14), the evidence of the Memorabilia certainly proves that Socrates aimed to help his companions become good in this way, but evidence of actual success at this aim is scant. Nothing in the Memorabilia or the Oeconomicus suggests that Critobulus succeeds in becoming the moderate and prudent gentleman he aspires to become. Nor, as Eric Buzzetti has observed, can Socrates be said to have succeeded with Aristippus (an encounter with whom Xenophon describes in Mem. 2.1), since he “went on to found the Cyrenaic school of hedonistic philosophy,” which, “placed great importance on the bodily pleasures.”31 There is only slightly more evidence that Socrates’s conversations with Euthydemus, which occupy much of book 4 of the Memorabilia, did anything to make him better with respect to virtue. Before encountering

36

Joseph Reisert

Socrates, Euthydemus believed that he had educated himself in public affairs by making a collection of well-reputed writings of poets and sophists; “proud on account of [his] wisdom,” he had “great hopes of surpassing everyone in being able to speak and take action” (Mem. 4.2.1). He had not, however, begun to engage in politics, being still very young. Xenophon narrates that Socrates set out to attract Euthydemus. His technique here is the art he had described to the courtesan Theodote earlier (Mem. 3.11.14). Drawn by Socrates’s almost flirtatious teasing, he comes to Socrates to converse, and is easily led to confess that his mode of education had left him without genuine knowledge of justice, of himself, and of the nature of democracy. Xenophon adds that “many” whom Socrates had thus reduced to aporia avoided him thereafter. Euthydemus, however, associated thereafter with Socrates, who “explained in the most simple and clear manner what he held he [Euthydemus] should know and what he held best for him to pursue” (Mem. 4.2.40).32 Euthydemus apparently forsakes his ambition to become a leading statesman, but it is not clear whether that decision is to be accounted a benefit either to Euthydemus or to the city. Xenophon’s juxtaposition of Socrates’s persuasion of Glaucon to stay out of politics with his encouragement of Charmides to undertake political activity can hardly be viewed as a wholehearted endorsement of Socrates’s political acumen, since Charmides subsequently became one of the rulers of Piraeus under the Thirty Tyrants (Mem. 3.6, 3.7). Socrates clearly benefits Euthydemus in one significant respect: Euthydemus no longer has the “excessive trust” in his knowledge, with which he began.33 Given Socrates’s opinion, as reported by Xenophon, that “justice and every other virtue is wisdom,” the correction of Euthydemus marks a step forward in his cultivation of virtue (Mem. 3.9.5). That this young man never seems to progress beyond being a non-contradicting respondent to Socrates’s questions suggests that he does not progress much further on the road to acquiring wisdom (Mem. 4.6). Xenophon makes clear, however, that Socrates regarded his philosophizing as the common work of the best sort of friendship, and that this philosophizing was identical to the project of becoming a better human being and of helping others to become better also. That is why the “good natures” to which he was attracted were those who were clever, had good memories, and were eager to learn (Mem. 4.1.2). He reports that Socrates explained his practice of friendship to Antiphon the sophist, as follows: Just as another is pleased by a good horse or a dog or a bird, so I myself am even more pleased by good friends, and if I possess something good I teach it, and I introduce them to others from whom, I believe, they will receive some benefit with a view to virtue. And reading collectively with my friends, I go through the treasures of the wise men of old which they wrote and left behind

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

37

in their books; and if we see something good, we pick it out; and we hold that it is a great gain if we become friends with one another. (Mem. 1.6.14)

Xenophon adds that “when [he] heard these things, [he] formed the impression that he himself was blessedly happy and that he led those who heard him to gentlemanliness” (Mem. 1.6.14).34 Xenophon never professes anything but admiration for Socrates, nor does he ever suggest that Socrates was less than blessedly happy. He twice quotes Socrates, though without either endorsing or qualifying the statement, as saying that his happiness derived from the knowledge that he was constantly becoming better (Mem. 1.6.8, 4.8.6). Nevertheless, Xenophon does cast doubt on the fundamental premise underlying the Socratic education: that virtue is knowledge. Not only does Xenophon fail in the Memorabilia to provide unambiguous examples of men led to practice the virtues by Socrates, he presents a portrait of only one companion of Socrates who has mastered the elenchus, namely Alcibiades (Mem. 1.2.40–46). Though he possessed the ability to contradict the great Pericles in argument, he certainly did not possess either moderation or justice. As Leo Strauss observes, “the only philosophic discussion engaged in by Xenophon in his own name that occurs in his Socratic writings . . . indicates clearly that moderation is acquired by practice rather than by learning.”35 Although, “in arguments [Socrates] dealt as he wished with all those who conversed with him,” not everyone is led by argument (Mem. 1.2.14). Just as Xenophon subtly calls into question the extent to which Socrates in fact benefited his companions, so also does he call into question whether any of Socrates’s philosophic friendships with his companions amounts in fact to the complete friendship of those who wish the highest and best goods to one another (in this case, knowledge) for the sake of the other. Strauss reports that the classics’ “teaching about the philosophic life is a teaching about friendship: the philosopher is as philosopher in need of friends.”36 Dialectical reasoning requires the presence of other persons, with whom one can discuss and argue. Different interlocutors pose different challenges, but the philosopher particularly requires the presence of other powerful intelligences.37 By contrast, Strauss argues, “the political man is characterized by the concern with being loved by all human beings regardless of their quality.”38 Strauss sees the difference as a consideration tending to favor philosophy over politics: desiring the affection, or at least obedience, of all, the political man’s ambition compels him to be indiscriminate in the pursuit of friends; the philosopher’s activity leads him to prefer better sorts. But the evidence we have from Xenophon’s Socratic works—and Plato’s too—indicates that Socrates’s mission makes him indiscriminate as well. In all those works he appears in conversation with many interlocutors distinguished only for their ordinariness.

38

Joseph Reisert

At this juncture, an important objection must be faced. It may be the case that there is no depiction of Socrates’s friendship with an equal in the Memorabilia because that work depicts, as Strauss has observed, “what Socrates did and what he said, not what he thought.”39 Allan Bloom goes further, insisting that the thoughts of Socrates are never truly represented in any of the Socratic works known to us and that the activity of philosophic friendship is never depicted because thought cannot be imitated except by thinking. Any work that in fact sought to convey Socrates’s thoughts would “amount to a philosophic treatise to which only a tiny number of men would have access.”40 Perhaps. But there is some indirect evidence that suggests that Socrates may have failed to establish philosophic friendships even with his best students, Plato and Xenophon. Although Socrates “trusted that those of his companions who were receptive to what he himself approved of would be good friends to him and to one another for their whole life” (Mem. 1.2.8), he seems not to have brought together his most philosophic followers, Plato and Xenophon, who seem never to have become friends to one another. Xenophon mentions Plato only in a context that suggests Socrates could do what Plato could not (Mem. 3.6.1). Plato never mentions Xenophon at all.

CONCLUSION In a way, Socrates proves to be as incapable of friendship as Cyrus. To be sure, Socrates’s practice of friendship is clearly superior to Cyrus’s: Socrates’s wisdom enabled him to foster friendships among his followers and companions. The artificiality and constraint of Cyrus’s dinner party with his leading followers (Cyr. 8.4) compares most unfavorably to Socrates’s grace and charm in Xenophon’s Symposium.41 Cyrus’s singleminded pursuit of power led him to debase his followers, to reduce them to ever more perfect instruments of his will. In the process, he eroded his followers’ and his own capacity for friendship. In contrast, Socrates’s single-minded pursuit of knowledge elevates him above the merely human aspect of friendship. He needs contact with a variety of arguments, but need not have any deep attachment to the people who make them. Neither Cyrus, nor Socrates, is truly a gentleman, or a practitioner of gentlemanly friendship, which involves helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies (Mem. 2.6.35). In their own ways, both men overcome the distinction between friends and enemies. To Cyrus, all men are subjects or potential subjects; in his universal empire, there are no more enemies to conquer but there are also no longer any men to befriend. Socrates, by contrast, was “a lover of human beings” and thus did not distinguish between friends and enemies (Mem. 1.2.60). Xenophon explains that he was “so just as to

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

39

harm no one,” whether friend or enemy, “not even a little” (Mem. 4.8.11). The gentlemanly life of friendship, described so attractively in Socrates’s speech to Critobulus, is sketched comically in the persona of Ischomachos in the Oeconomicus, seriously in Cambyses, the constitutional monarch of republican Persia, and is perhaps most fully embodied in the life of Xenophon himself.42

NOTES 1. Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus, with a new Literal Translation of the Oeconomicus by Carnes Lord (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 161. For a similar view, see Christopher Bruell, “Xenophon” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 92; Thomas L. Pangle, “Socrates in Xenophon’s Political Writings” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Paul Vander Waerdt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 147. 2. Vivienne Gray, The Framing of Socrates: The Literary Interpretation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1998), 194. 3. Bodil Due, The Cyropaedia: Xenophon’s Aims and Methods (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1989), 202. 4. Deborah Levine Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 122. 5. James Tatum, Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction: On The Education of Cyrus (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 58. 6. Xenophon, Memorabilia, trans. Amy L. Bonnette (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), book 1, chapter, 1, paragraph 3. Hereafter, references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text, indicated by the abbreviation Mem., followed by the book, chapter, and paragraph referenced. Compare Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus, trans. Wayne Ambler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), book 1, chapter 6, paragraph 6. Hereafter, references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text, indicated by the abbreviation Cyr., followed by the book, chapter, and paragraph referenced. The view stated appears to be Xenophon’s own as well. Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander” in Xenophon VII: Scripta Minora, ed. E. C. Marchant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), chapter 9, paragraph 9. 7. Cyrus recounts the lesson back to Cambyses, attributing the lesson to his father’s teaching. 8. Once he attains mastery of Babylon, however, Cyrus also begins to attend directly to managing his public image independently of the reality, for example by the use of cosmetics (Cyr. 8.1.40–42). Socrates never worries about his image, and indeed insists that his daimonion opposed his preparing a defense for his trial (Mem. 4.8.5). Compare Xenophon, Apology of Socrates, 4.4. 9. Nadon argues that, when Cyrus’s unwillingness to view the beautiful Panthea (Cyr. 5.1.8) is contrasted with Socrates’s eagerness to visit the attractive courtesan, Theodote (Mem. 3.11), one must conclude that only Socrates, and not Cyrus, is truly moderate. The delights of philosophy so completely satisfy Socrates as to make him

40

Joseph Reisert

proof against the charms of eros in a way that Cyrus’s attachment to politics does not. Christopher Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 158–59. I disagree: Cyrus’s stated reason for refusing to visit Panthea is likely disingenuous, and when he does finally meet her, he demonstrates no interest in her (Cyr. 7.3.14). In my view, the episode demonstrates instead the greater freedom of the philosophic life than the political life. Socrates can philosophize with anyone, at any time, in any place; Cyrus, by contrast, has to attend constantly to preserving his rule. 10. Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 116. Tatum, Imperial Fiction, 209–10. 11. Christopher Bruell, “Xenophon and His Socrates,” introduction to Memorabilia, by Xenophon, trans. Amy L. Bonnette (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), xviii. 12. Compare also Xenophon, “Oeconomicus” in The Shorter Socratic Writings, ed. Robert C. Bartlett (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), chapter 20, paragraph 29. Hereafter references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text, indicated by the abbreviation Oec., followed by the chapter, and paragraph referenced. 13. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 1155b27–1156a5. Hereafter, references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text, indicated by the abbreviation NE, followed by the Bekker numbers of the passage referenced. 14. For a defense of the view that the incomplete friendships exclude goodwill, see A.W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 148–54. 15. Tatum, Imperial Fiction, 100–102. 16. W.R. Newell, “Tyranny and the Science of Ruling in Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus,” Journal of Politics 45, no. 4 (November 1983): 889–906, 889–90. 17. This theme is central to Nadon’s account of the Cyropaedia. 18. Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince, 179. 19. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1157b20: “nothing is as proper to friends as living together; for while those who are in want desire benefit, blessedly happy people . . . desire to spend their days together, since a solitary life fits them least of all.” 20. Xenophon underlines the point, referring both at the beginning and the end of his account to Cyrus’s aim of making his strongest followers “more friendly to himself than to each other” (Cyr. 8.1.47; 8.2.28: “so this makes it clear how he contrived . . .”). 21. The seating arrangement at his private dinner parties follows a similar design, with a similar purpose (Cyr. 8.4.3–5) and with a similar effect (Cyr. 8.4.10–12). 22. Even some of the commentators so regard Cyrus. See, for example, Due, Cyropaedia, 222–23. 23. Leslie Rubin, “Love and Politics in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia,” Interpretation 16 (3) (1989): 407. 24. Rubin, “Love and Politics,” 400. 25. Hobbes, Leviathan with Selected Variants from the Latin edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), 58. 26. Hobbes, Leviathan, 34.

Xenophon on Gentlemanliness and Friendship

41

27. Compare Xenophon, “Symposium” in The Shorter Socratic Writings, ed. Robert C. Bartlett (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), chapter 8, paragraph 2. Hereafter references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text, indicated by the abbreviation Sym., followed by the chapter and paragraph referenced. 28. Bruell, “Xenophon and His Socrates,” xviii. 29. See Cyr. 1.6.31–34; Plato, Republic 334c–335a. 30. In regard to the term “worthless,” the Greek is ponêron; Bonnette has “wicked.” 31. Eric Buzzetti, “The Rhetoric of Xenophon and the Treatment of Justice in the Memorabilia,” Interpretation 29 (1) (2001): 6. 32. Buzzetti, “Rhetoric of Xenophon,” 7. 33. Compare Plato, Apology of Socrates, 21d. 34. With regard to the term “blessedly happy,” the Greek is makarios; Bonnette has “blessed.” 35. Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 13. The passage is Mem. 1.2.21. 36. Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, Revised and expanded edition, including the StraussKojève correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press, 1991), 194. 37. At Mem. 4.6.13–15, Xenophon distinguishes between Socrates’s manner of dialectical engagement with those who do not object (Socrates proceeded by “what was most agreed upon”) and his response to those who “without having anything clear to say” nevertheless objected to his assertions. In this case, Socrates would return to the premise of the argument, seek agreement, and then proceed through the argument. Xenophon does not mention the possibility of objections from someone who indeed has something to say and might challenge Socrates’s hypotheses. 38. Strauss, On Tyranny, 198. 39. Leo Strauss, “The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” Social Research 6 (1939): 518. 40. Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 412. 41. Pangle, “Socrates,” 150. 42. Compare Bruell, ”Xenophon,” 91: “Xenophon may have been one who pursued the Socratic question of the best way of life without ever coming to accept completely the Socratic answer that that way of life is the philosophic one;” and John Ray, “The Education of Cyrus as Xenophon’s Statesman,” Interpretation 19 (1992): 241: “in exceeding Socrates in manliness and Cyrus in serious reflection, Xenophon is more than either the complete man.”

3 On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Kathryn Sensen

Aristotle begins his treatment of friendship (philia)1 in the Nicomachean Ethics by praising it as both vituous and “most necessary” for life: “for no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the rest of the good things” (1155a4–6).2 This beautiful statement seems to offer the strongest possible proof that we desire friendship for its own sake: friendship is not a mere means to some further or greater good, for even if we had all other goods, life would not be choiceworthy without it. At the same time, this statement points to some radical incompleteness or defectiveness of our lives on their own terms; it appears that even the life of a virtuous person, as Aristotle had described it earlier in the Ethics, would not be choiceworthy if it did not include friends. What is it about friends, then, that makes them so necessary and integral to our lives? Aristotle makes a few introductory points about why people consider friends so necessary: the wealthy and powerful need friends to benefit, the poor and unfortunate find refuge in friends, the young are guided by friends and the old cared for by them, and those in their prime of life are more able to think and act with friends (1155a6–16). These examples all point to the usefulness of having friends, but they do not really account for the sweetness of friendship, the emotional barrenness of a life devoid of friends. This helps to explain why Aristotle next points out the naturalness of friendship: By nature friendship seems to be present in a begetter toward the begotten and in the begotten toward the begetter, not only in human beings but also in birds and in most animals, and among those who are of the same kind (tois homoethnesi) toward one another, and most of all among human beings, which is why we praise those who are friends of humanity (tous philanthrōpous) (1155a16–21). 43

44

Kathryn Sensen

Friendship or affection seems to exist naturally among beings who are alike or similar; and insofar as it is based on similarity, it grows up more strongly the more akin friends are to one another (as one can see by comparing the strength of parental love with the tepid affection one has for a stranger in China). In this context the evidence for the naturalness of friendly feelings is that they are present spontaneously, without reflection, as is confirmed by the fact that they are found in animals as well. Nonetheless, with his remark that friends of humanity are praised, Aristotle reminds us that in human beings spontaneous feelings remain subject to, and affected by, judgments about what is good and bad, praiseworthy and blameworthy. So the pleasantly natural affection people feel for those akin to them is not sufficient to answer the question of why or whether friendship is good and choiceworthy for human beings. Accordingly, Aristotle goes on to assert that “friendship is not only necessary, but also noble” (1155a28–29). Its nobility can be seen in Aristotle’s claim here that “when people are friends, there is no need of justice, but when they are just there is still need of friendship” (1155a26–27). This implies that friends are above considerations of “mine” and “thine,” that they overcome the self-concern implied in the demand for justice and do good to a friend for his own sake. But what is it that leads or enables people to form such friendships? Aristotle reports that the disagreements about friendship are not few. The disputes seem to amount to two alternatives: friendship is said to exist between those who are alike, or between those who are unlike (1155a32–b8). These alternative possibilities are not surprising, given Aristotle’s introductory remarks on friendship that we have outlined already; for most of the examples he gave of our need for friends involved a coming together of opposites, such as rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old, who can each provide something that the other lacks. But right afterward, we saw that he tied natural affection to similarity or kinship among beings. So Aristotle himself has pointed us to the two alternatives that the disputants put forward. Nonetheless, he claims that he will not follow their approach to the question. For they try to understand friendship by looking to “higher and more natural (phusikōteron)” causes, as in Euripides’s comment that dry earth loves rain while rain-filled heaven loves to fall to earth, and Heracleitus’s claim that the most beautiful harmony comes from things that pull apart (1155b2–6). Aristotle enjoins us to leave aside the problems that belong to the natural things, since they are not at home in the present inquiry, and instead to understand friendship by examining the “human things” and what pertains to characters and feelings (1155b8–10). This sounds like a sensible approach, and it leads us to expect that Aristotle’s own inquiry will not seek to understand friendship from the standpoint of “nature.” Yet, as we have seen, he has already pointed to the existence of a natural love of one’s kin and one’s kind as an element of human

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

45

friendship; moreover, he will in fact refer to “nature” at numerous points in his analysis of friendship3; and, most strikingly, in the culmination of his attempt to explain why a good man would need friends, as we will see, he examines the question “more naturally” (phusikōteron) (1170a13). Why, then, does he encourage us to approach the “nature” of friendship not directly, but through an examination of “human things”? The question that seems to be at stake among those who take a “more natural” approach to friendship is whether all friendship is fundamentally rooted in neediness or some incompleteness of our natures, or whether a friend is loved for his own sake, as being akin to oneself. This could be called the necessary versus the noble view of friendship. But as Aristotle has said, friendship is considered to be both necessary and noble (1155a28–29). This implies that, to understand human friendship fully, one cannot simply jump to its natural roots, to the “deeds” of friends so to speak; one must also consider the “speeches” about friendship, the way that friendship is seen by the friends themselves as being both noble and necessary (cf. 1168a35–b1). In considering the extent to which the speeches about friendship accord with the deeds, Aristotle prepares the way toward a “more natural” account of our need for friends.

KINDS OF FRIENDSHIP Aristotle begins his attempt to clarify the problems belonging to human friendship by asking what the lovable4 object is; for not everything is loved but only what is lovable (1155b17–18). In other words, our love is not simply a gift we bestow on things with no underlying cause, but there has to be something that calls forth our love, the “lovable”—there is no unconditional love. Aristotle observes that there seem to be three lovable objects: the “good or pleasant or useful” (1155b19). But the useful seems to be a means to something good or pleasant, so only the good and the pleasant are loved as ends (1155b19–21). It is striking here that Aristotle keeps separate the good and the pleasant as ends. In book I he had suggested that all human pursuits aim at some highest good, called happiness, which was understood to encompass all the other ends (1094a18–22, 1095a18); but now he implicitly denies that the pleasure we love is fully subsumed under “the good.” This suggests the possibility that having the “good” will not be sufficient for happiness, but that being happy may require some pleasure in addition to the good. Another striking feature of his list of what is lovable is that it does not include the noble or beautiful (kalon)5; this would seem to suggest that we do not love the noble for its own sake, but only if it is also thought to be also good or pleasant. This has important implications for friendship, to which we will return in the course of this essay.

46

Kathryn Sensen

Now in what sense do we love the good, Aristotle asks: do people love the good, or what is good for themselves? “It seems that each person loves what is good for himself, and that the good is lovable simply, but the good for each is lovable to each” (1155b23–25). But this observation seems to pose a serious problem for friendship; if what each person loves is what is good or pleasant for himself, then it might seem that we love a friend, too, only as being good or pleasant for us.6 Yet “it is said that one ought to wish for the good things for the friend for the sake of the friend” (1155b31). Accordingly, Aristotle says that friendship can be distinguished from the love of inanimate objects by the presence of recognized mutual goodwill between the friends (1155b27–29). It remains to be seen how these features proper to friendship coexist with the love of one’s own good and pleasure. In accordance with his enumeration of three lovable objects, Aristotle claims that there are three kinds of friendship7: friendship “on account of the useful” (dia to chrēsimon), “on account of pleasure” (di’hēdonēn), and “of the good” (tōn agathōn) (1156a10, a12, b7).8 As this phrasing indicates, the motive or end of friendship is clearer in the first two kinds of friendship than in a friendship of the good. But the first two kinds of friendship are presented as inferior to the friendship of the good; for those who are friends on account of the useful love on account of what is good for themselves, and friends on account of pleasure love on account of what is pleasant for themselves, and the friend is loved not insofar as he exists (estin), but insofar as he is useful or pleasant (1156a14–16).

Now this description of the inferior kinds of friendship, which fall short of what people hope for from friendship (cf. 1155b31), is rather unsettling; for it indicates that friendships motivated by love of what is good for oneself or pleasant for oneself are ones in which the “friend” is loved merely as a source of one’s own good or pleasure, rather than being loved in himself. And yet Aristotle had just suggested that the good for oneself and pleasant for oneself are the (only) two objects that are loved as ends. How, then, does the third, superior kind of friendship, friendship “of the good,” differ from these? Does it contain what people hope for from friendship, a love that is not selfish, but is a genuine love for the friend himself? A friendship of those who are good and alike (homoiōn) in virtue is said by Aristotle to be “complete” or perfect (teleia) (1156b7–8). Such friends “wish for good things for one another in the same way insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves” (1156b8–9). This comment stresses the sameness of the way these friends wish for one another’s good, without fully specifying what that way is. The friends wish for each other’s good insofar as their characters are good, and not merely in some limited respect as do friends for utility or pleasure, who only “wish for good things for one

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

47

another in the respect in which they love” (1156a9–10). In other words, good friends love the good character of the friend and so wish each other well in respect to their characters as a whole, while a friend for pleasure may love a friend, say, only for his sense of humor and so feel goodwill toward him only in that respect. Accordingly, friendship of the good would seem to answer one’s desire to be loved for what one is, not merely for attributes like beauty or wealth which one has by chance (kata sumbebēkos, 1156a16–17) and which may not be lasting (1156a19–20). But questions about the character of this friendship still remain. In the first place, being loved for one’s virtuous character is not necessarily the same as being loved for one’s own sake; one might love a person’s character as a whole, but in doing so be moved by one’s own neediness, one’s desire to have that good person as a friend to oneself. In loving each other’s good characters, then, do good friends love what they perceive to be good for themselves, or do they love the friend simply because he is good in himself? Aristotle is reticent about posing this alternative—although his earlier remark, that each loves what is good for himself, would seem to decide the question. But now he deflects the need to distinguish between these alternatives by insisting that each of the friends is “good simply and good for his friend; for the good are both simply good and beneficial to one another” (1156b13–14). If the friends’ being good has the result that the good of the two friends coincides or is complementary, as he suggests here, then this would help to explain the possibility of a close union in complete friendship; the friends’ self-concern would be fully in harmony with their concern for the good of the friend, and they would truly have no need to distinguish between “mine” and “thine.” But on reflection Aristotle’s claim here is puzzling: how can the friends be both good simply and good or beneficial to each other? If they are “good simply,” and so fully able to benefit themselves, then what need do they have to be benefited by a friend?9 On the other hand, if they need a good friend in order to become good, then is the friend not loved for the sake of the good one needs for oneself, rather than being loved for his own sake? In other words, a focus on the friends’ goodness raises the twin dangers of making friendship either superfluous on the one hand or utilitarian on the other. These difficulties point to the need to understand more precisely what Aristotle means by calling a person “good,” and what it is that draws the good together into a friendship.

SIMILARITY AND PLEASURE These are questions that we will consider in the remainder of this essay. But for the moment, there is one other aspect of “complete” friendship that needs to be considered, and that may shed light on some of the difficulty.

48

Kathryn Sensen

Complete friendship, as we noted above, is between those who are not only good but also “alike.” Earlier we saw some indication of the importance of likeness as a basis for natural affection between beings. In complete friendship, it appears to play an important role as well. Aristotle notes that good people are not only good simply and good for each other, but they are similarly pleasant as well: “the good are pleasant both simply and to one another; for to each person, actions that are his own and such as his own are pleasant, while the actions of the good are the same or similar” (1156b14–17). This kind of friendship is called “complete” then because it combines both ends that are loved, the good and the pleasant. Moreover, as Aristotle presents it, the source of the pleasure good people take in one another is not their goodness as such but their similarity. It seems to be not so much because they are good as because they are alike that they enjoy being around each other and want to live together; and living together (suzēn), Aristotle will note later, is most characteristic of friendship (1171b35–1172a1). Accordingly, Aristotle now observes that every friendship is for good or for pleasure, and exists “according to some similarity” (1156b20–21). So this suggests at least a partial conclusion regarding the two disputed views of friendship raised earlier: all friendship exists among those who are alike in some respect—friends cannot be simply unlike, since likeness is the natural source of friendly affection (1156a16–21). Moreover, it sheds some light on how friendship of the good can avoid being either superfluous or utilitarian; if their friendship grows out of an affection based on similarity or kinship of soul, then such a friendship adds pleasure to their lives, even if those lives are good already. At the same time, the friends cannot be said to be loved as a mere means to pleasure, since it is the fact that one loves or feels affection for them that makes it so pleasant to be around them.10 But in “complete” friendship, does being “good” exhaust the sense in which the friends are similar to and so pleasant to one another? Is not some range of tastes and temperaments likely among the good (say, a preference for Bach vs. Beethoven), so that those among the good who are similar to one another also in other respects are more likely to desire one another’s company? In other words, the goodness of the friends alone does not itself guarantee that they will be the most similar to one another, and so will find the most pleasure in their friendship.11 And one could even wonder whether the friends’ very love of one another for being good might not place a check on the pleasure of the friendship; for good friends were said to love one another for what they are, that is, “insofar as they are good” (1156b8–9). But is it not sweeter, more pleasant, to be found lovable also for the characteristics one does not consider simply good, for one’s defects and oddities? Isn’t a real friend thought to be one to whom one can reveal one’s weaknesses as well as one’s strengths, without having to fear that the

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

49

friend will then cease to love one? This suggests the possibility of a tension between the pleasure to be found in the friendship of those who are similar and the friends’ concern for the good. Insofar as one loves the friend not because he is good but because he is akin, friends can reinforce one another’s defects;12 in being loved by one another, they feel reassured that they are not so defective after all. This is particularly sweet because the awareness of one’s defects is painful, but if one is loved for them, one is unlikely to continue to perceive them as defects.13 Yet the reason that sensing one’s defects is painful in the first place is that one wants for oneself to be good, or to have what is good. Does a friend then truly help one to be good, or does his love only encourage complacency, dimming one’s awareness of one’s need for the good? To help one become good, it seems that a friend must be not simply alike but good. Hence Aristotle’s insistence that a “complete” friendship is one that is of those who are both good and alike—despite the importance of likeness as a source of affection, likeness in the absence of goodness is not sufficient for friendship; for it neglects and may even undermine our deep-seated desire for the good.

FRIENDSHIP WITH ONESELF We have seen that the three kinds of friendship delineated by Aristotle can all be seen to exist for good or for pleasure, with the third “complete” kind combining both of these; and all are said to entail some similarity between the friends. But because Aristotle had claimed that the only objects lovable as ends are the good for oneself and the pleasant for oneself, it became hard to see how genuine friendship could be possible. Do true friends not love each other as ends, and benefit one another for the sake of the friend? We saw that Aristotle denied that this takes place in the two inferior or incidental kinds of friendship, leaving “complete” friendship as the only possible candidate for satisfying our expectations regarding friendship. And while his discussion of complete friendship did not end up claiming that good friends love each other as ends in themselves and benefit one another for the sake of the other, it did so to speak blur the line separating self and other; good friends are good and pleasant both in themselves and to one another, and they wish each other well. But two large, related questions remain unclear. Why are good people not sufficient unto themselves—that is, what leads them to form friendships at all? This question becomes especially pressing after Aristotle indicates, in passing, that gods do not have friends (1159a7–8). Second, how can the concern with one’s own good, which Aristotle has emphasized, coexist with concern for the good of another, which is characteristic of the friend? To shed light on these questions we can begin by looking in some detail at the

50

Kathryn Sensen

chapter (IX.4) in which Aristotle discusses how “the marks of friendship toward those near us, and by which friendships are defined, seem to come out of the things toward oneself” (1166a1–2). Aristotle draws the connection between one’s relation to oneself and one’s relation to a friend by mentioning four characteristics ascribed to friends: people take a friend to be (1) someone who wishes for and does the good things, or those that appear good, for the sake of the friend (1166a2–4), or (2) one who wishes for the friend to be and to live, for his sake (1166a4–5); others14 consider a friend to be (3) someone with whom one passes one’s life (ton sundiagonta) and who prefers or chooses (hairoumenon) the same things (1166a6–7), or (4) one who shares in pain and enjoyment with a friend (1166a2–8). But these are all characteristics that, Aristotle claims, belong “to a decent person toward himself (and to the rest, insofar as they assume that they are decent people . . . but it seems that virtue and the serious person are the measure of each)” (1166a10–11). It is not the case, then, that the better people will be those who succeed in overcoming self-concern, while the worse will remain focused on themselves; rather Aristotle here suggests that it is the decent person who will possess the characteristics of friendship toward himself most of all15—and that it is precisely “out of” the things toward oneself that friendship toward those near us emerges (1166a2). How does that work, precisely? Aristotle goes on to explain how the decent person (and perhaps everyone, insofar as they assume that they are decent) has these characteristics toward himself, and here he seems to begin with the third characteristic ascribed to friends: the decent person “makes the same judgments (homognōmonei) as himself and desires the same things according to his whole soul” (1166a13–14). That is, the whole soul of the decent person is unified by some constant and overarching desire that encompasses all of his passions and all the parts of his mind, and which accords with his steady judgment of what is good and bad; there is presumably no conflict between, say, what he judges good and what he desires as being immediately pleasant. This is akin to the way two friends may prefer or choose the same things as one another, but it seems to be a much taller order. Is it even possible for a human being? Moreover, does it not matter which particular things he desires according to his whole soul—is it a matter of indifference whether he merely “assumes” himself to be decent, or really is decent?16 Aristotle next notes that the decent person “wishes for the good things for himself, and the things that appear good, and does them (since it belongs to a good person to work hard at the good)” (1166a14–16). This is the first of the characteristics he had attributed to friends above, though with a small but noteworthy change in wording: a friend was said to wish and do “the good things or the things that appear good” (1166a3–4) for the sake of his friend; but the decent person is said to wish for “the good things and the

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

51

things that appear good for himself” (1166a14–15). In order to be a friend, it may be sufficient that one wish and do the things that appear to be good, for the sake of one’s friend, even if they are not truly good; but the decent person is not satisfied by what merely appears good, he also wants what is truly good, for himself. For, in being mistaken about one’s good, is one not left lacking something that one needs, something without which one will therefore feel unsatisfied? In stating that the decent person desires “the good things and the things that appear good,” Aristotle suggests that one who is mistaken about the good he pursues will not be fully content—he will also desire the (truly) good things. This implies that the person who is mistaken about the good, who merely assumes himself to be decent, cannot after all be fully harmonious in soul, or always make the same judgments as himself; he will continue to desire a good that differs from the one he believes he should pursue. So in order to be truly harmonious in soul, it would seem that the decent person’s desires must be solely for the true good—either through having understood what it is, or through having liberated himself from belief in the merely apparent goods and so felt the need to seek the true good. The first would require wisdom, the second would require the (single-minded) pursuit of wisdom, or philosophy. Yet because Aristotle presents the decent person as wishing not only for the things that are good for himself, but also for those that (merely) appear good, he seems to cast doubt on whether the decent person—or the serious person who seems to be the “measure” of decency—knows what is truly good for himself. Perhaps for this reason, Aristotle next refers to a different sort of person than either the “decent” or the “serious” person: “it belongs to a good (agathon) person to work hard (diaponein) at the good” (1166a15–16). The “good person,” Aristotle seems to hint, works harder at the good than either the decent or the serious person; he works, we may surmise, to overcome the conflict in the decent person’s desires between what “appears” good and what “is” good for him. Completing his account of how the decent person has the first of the characteristics ascribed to friends, Aristotle notes that he does them “for the sake of himself (since they are for the thinking part [tou dianoētikou], which each person seems to be)” (1166a16–17). Now this comes as something of a surprise.17 In his first point about the decent person, Aristotle had presented desire as unifying the “whole soul,” in accordance with one’s steady judgment of the good. Likewise, in Book VI Aristotle had described human beings as being “desiring mind or thinking desire” (1139b4–5).18 Here, however, desire and man’s whole composite nature appear to drop out, and the “whole” person is identified with a mere part, with thinking.19 Now this identification may give us some clue about the particular mistake the decent person makes about his own good. If he is moved partly by a desire for what merely “appears” good for himself, perhaps this is connected to his

52

Kathryn Sensen

belief that he “himself” is mere “thinking” and not desire. To the extent that he does not understand what he himself really is, he also cannot understand what is really good for himself. And it is striking that this questionable identification of “oneself” as “thinking” is made in connection with the precise aspect of friendship we have been struggling to understand all along: namely, the question of how one can love the friend “for his own sake,” if each loves what is “good for himself.” This identification of oneself with thinking here seems to provide a hint as to how the friend can act both for his own sake and for the sake of his friend: each person “is” not the bodily, desiring being he seems to be, but he “is” only his thought or his mind. And if this is the case, then perhaps the separateness of the friends’ bodies does not imply a necessary separation between their “selves”—perhaps two friends can have “one soul” (cf. 1168b7). Yet Aristotle goes on to cast further doubt on this identification of the “being” of each person as “thinking.” Confirming that the decent person also has the second of the characteristics ascribed to friends, Aristotle notes that “he wishes for himself to live (zēn) and be saved (sōizesthai), and especially that in him which exercises prudence (phronei)”20 (1166a17–19). While it had been said that a friend wants his friend “to be and to live,” the decent person wants himself “to live and be saved (or preserved)” (1166a4–5, a17–18). That is, while we seem to ourselves to “be” our thinking, what we wish for ourselves is not precisely “to be,” but “to live”21 as the bodily beings we are, and to be “saved” or preserved from the evils that may befall our lives, including—most obviously and inevitably—death. It is most clearly here that the “things toward oneself” lead one not to inner harmony and satisfaction, but to a feeling of lack or incompleteness or longing for something beyond oneself—for one wants for oneself to live on as oneself, and yet we are aware that we are mortal beings. As Aristotle goes on to note, “each person wants good things for himself,” as the limited, mortal, desiring being that he is; and “no one chooses, by becoming something other, that the thing that has come to be in his place have all things (for even now the god has the good), but while being whatever it is that he is” (1166a19–22). We do not really want to be gods, because then we would no longer be ourselves; and yet we want for ourselves the good that belongs to god, including the immortality which presupposes a simple rather than composite nature (cf. 1154b22). In identifying “ourselves” as our mind or thinking, and thus living according to the “most divine of the things in us” (1177a16), we somehow hope to gain for ourselves the good that belongs to god; we hope to “live and be saved.” Aristotle thus indicates why we are attracted to seeing our being as “simple” and not composite—even as he points to what is problematic about this identification of “ourselves” not with our whole composite nature but simply with our “thinking.”

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

53

Aristotle quietly points again to the importance of this desire to live and be saved with his subsequent claim about the pleasure the decent or serious person takes in passing his life with himself: “for the memories of what he has done are delightful, and his hopes for the future are good, and such things are pleasant. And his thinking is well supplied with things to contemplate” (1166a 24–27). So the past, future, and present are all factors that affect the (present) pleasure a decent man takes in passing his life with himself (as friends were said to enjoy doing with one another). And yet how can his hopes for the future be simply “good”? Can he contemplate with perfect calmness, or even “pleasure,” the fact that his life must come to an end, in spite of his desire “to live and be saved”? It seems that Aristotle here either defines the “decent” person according to an incredibly high standard—the person who has learned how to die22; or he implicitly suggests that the decent person’s delightful memories of the things he has done help to make him hopeful toward the future: in thinking back on his own decent actions, he becomes hopeful that he will indeed “live and be saved” as he wishes. As Aristotle notes later in Book IX, those who are “decent and blessed” desire most of all to live, since “their way of life is most choiceworthy and their living is most blessed” (1170a27–29). Being “decent” is the way to become “blessed.” Aristotle concludes his description of how the decent person is toward himself by observing that “he most of all suffers and enjoys along with himself; for at all times the same thing is painful and pleasant, and not other at other times; for he is, so to speak, without regrets” (1166a27–29). It is striking that, given his preceding emphasis on how pleasant the past, future, and present are for the decent person, Aristotle now makes pain or suffering primary. At the same time, he indicates that the pain the decent person feels goes hand in hand with his pleasure: the same thing is painful and also (te kai) pleasant (1166a27). How is it that the same thing is at all times painful and also pleasant to the decent person? Aristotle does not explain this assertion here, but in the conclusion of his discussion of pleasure in Book VII, he had made this remark: Nothing that is the same is always pleasant, because our nature is not simple, but something different (heteron) is also implanted in it [or poisons it, eneinai], such that we are perishable; so that when one of the two natures acts, this would be against nature for the other nature (1154b20–23).

Because our nature is not “simple”—that is, we are not mere “thinking”— but our nature is composite and so perishable, it is impossible for us always to find the same thing simply pleasant. Rather, when our “thinking” nature acts and feels pleasure, this is painful for the “other,” bodily nature, and when the bodily nature acts and feels pleasure, this is painful for the thinking nature. So it seems to be because our thinking nature is “poisoned” by

54

Kathryn Sensen

this other element that we cannot find the same thing always pleasant; “change of everything is sweet” for us, because of some “wickedness” (ponērian) (1154b28–29). Therefore, a changeable human being is also “wicked,” and so is “the nature in need of change”: “for it is neither simple nor decent” (1154b30–31). Thus if the decent person is said to be one for whom the “same thing is at all times painful and pleasant,” then this would imply that the decent person acts always according to his “thinking” nature, even if this is painful for his bodily nature. The decent person, accordingly, has perfect self-control (enkrateia) at all times. Yet “self-control” falls short of what we believe virtue to be: the virtuous person is said to have no desire for what is excessive or bad, but simply to take pleasure in being virtuous (1146a10–12). The truly “simple” and “decent” person, in short, is an impossible ideal for a human being.23 How, then, does this description of the way the decent person is toward himself allow us to understand the characteristics of friendship toward others? Aristotle gives this explanation: Thus by each of these things belonging to the decent person toward himself, and being toward the friend as toward the self (for the friend is another self), also friendship (or affection, philia) seems to be something of these, and friends those to whom they belong (1166a29–33).

The logic of this connection between the decent person’s characteristics and the characteristics of friendship with others is difficult to pin down here; but in light of his whole discussion of the way a decent person is toward himself, what Aristotle is suggesting in this passage seems to be this: because we believe these characteristics belong to a decent person—while the life of a decent person is “most blessed” (1170a28–29)—our love is “of these” characteristics (1166a32), and so also we love as friends the decent people “to whom” these characteristics seem to “belong” (1166a33). Why do we wish to have the decent person as a friend to ourselves? Most simply, we need to have a decent friend because we ourselves are not simply decent. And this, as we have suggested, is no accident: no human being can be fully decent in the way a decent person was said to be, because such a person would have to have a “simple” nature rather than a composite one. Yet, from the outside, virtue and self-control look the same to us: when we see someone acting in accordance with virtue, we may suppose that that person is simply decent and virtuous in a way that we ourselves are not.24 And because we believe that we ourselves “are” our thinking, and not our whole composite being, we also believe that there is not a fundamental or necessary separation between our own “self” and our decent “friend”: we may have separate bodies, but we “are” our minds and not our bodies; and therefore the friend can be—as Aristotle presents the friend here for the first time—not a different person but “another self” (allos autos, 1166a32). In

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

55

having a decent person as a friend, living with him and passing our lives together, we “have” the friend’s decent characteristics for ourselves. This understanding of friendship, accordingly, hinges upon a certain understanding of ourselves as having two separate “natures,” a bodily one and a thinking one, in light of which we identify “ourselves” with the thinking part of ourselves. Indeed, Aristotle’s next remark confirms that this is the key assumption to which he was pointing: But whether there is or is not friendship toward oneself, let it be set aside for the present; but friendship would seem to exist to this extent, insofar as [the self] is two or more, from the things said, and because the extreme (huperbolē) of friendship is made to be like the one toward the self (1166a33–b2).

That is, it is only insofar as our “self” is made up of two or more, our own self and our friend who is “another self,” that we can love the friend “for his own sake.” This, in turn, is possible only to the extent that a human being has two or more “natures,” a thinking nature separate from a bodily nature. Accordingly, Aristotle suggests here that what friendship aims at, in its strongest or most “extreme” form, is the union of two into one. Later in Book IX he elaborates on that with this remark: It does not seem possible to be very much (sphodra) a friend to many. That is why it is not possible to be in love (eran) with more than one person; for being in love wishes to be a kind of extreme (huperbolē) of friendship, but this is toward one (1171a10–12).

The friendship “of the good,” it seems, is not distinct in its basic nature from the neediness of erotic love: as Aristotle now goes on to point out (early in the following chapter, IX.5), goodwill alone does not make a friendship, for the love of a friend (philēsis) also involves “intensity and desire” (1166b34). Thus the belief that one loves a friend for his own sake turns out to have a much different root than it first appears to have; what initially seems to be a disinterested love of one who is good, bestowed by someone himself good, has now come to sight as a needy love for one who seems to have the good one lacks—culminating in an erotic attempt to become “one” with the loved friend. To be sure, Aristotle’s account has also pointed to practical and important ways in which those who are more decent will be more capable of friendship with another. For the more decent people act according to their judgment of what is good for themselves, and not according to what seems pleasant but harmful to them; low or bad people (hoi phauloi), on the other hand, are “just like the unrestrained,” choosing the pleasant instead of what they believe to be good for themselves (1166b8–9), since their desires are at

56

Kathryn Sensen

odds with their wish (1166b7–8), with the result that they do not have a friendly feeling toward themselves (1166b25–26). And corrupt people seek others to pass their days with as a way of “fleeing from themselves” (1166b13–14); for they have unpleasant memories and anticipate other such things, and being with others allows them to forget these (1166b15–17). Now this suggests that even corrupt people do still seek a kind of friendship with others, but in their case that friendship is a running away from themselves, an attempt to forget the way that one is not living up to one’s own wish for the good. Accordingly, this friendship for mere “pleasure” does not include real affection for what one’s friend is; for, being dissatisfied with oneself, one does not really like a friend who is similar to oneself, with whom one pursues mere pleasure instead of the good for which one wishes. The more decent or self-restrained people, on the other hand, are more satisfied with themselves for living in accordance with their judgment of the good—even if doing so involves a painful restraint of one’s desires—and their affection for a good friend is in accord with that wish. As such, they are able to regard the friend as something more than a mere instrument for their own use or pleasure; they are able to love and do good for a friend, because of what that friend is—namely, both good (virtuous) and similar to oneself.

THE FRIEND AS ANOTHER SELF Aristotle’s depiction of the decent person’s relation to himself helped us to see what leads a person who wishes for the good for himself to seek friendship with a serious or decent person as “another self.” However, it did not make clear how it comes about that one actually becomes a friend to the decent person and perceives him to be “another self,” nor did it sufficiently bring to light the basis for and adequacy of the belief that we “are” our thinking. Aristotle explores these questions in the four chapters following his discussion of the way the decent person is toward himself. He begins (in IX.5) with the question of how goodwill (eunoia, literally “well-mindedness”) arises, and how mere goodwill turns into a friendship. Aristotle says that goodwill “comes to be on account of virtue and some decency, through the appearance that someone is noble (or beautiful, kalos) or courageous or some such thing” (1167a19–20). But while this appearance of nobility or virtue is enough to make one wish good things for such a person, it does not yet make that person a friend. For the love of a friend entails two further things: one feels not only goodwill toward the one who appears virtuous but also loves him with some “intensity and desire,” yearning after such a person when he is gone (1166b33); and one does not merely wish good things for him but also one does good things for him, being willing to “act

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

57

with him” and “take trouble” over him (1167a9–10). This suggests that the willingness to work for the good of the virtuous or decent person is connected to one’s desire or yearning for that person: it is through doing favors or “good works” for the virtuous person that he becomes one’s own “friend” (1167a14); for goodwill is like “friendship without work (argēn)” (1167a11). How do such favors or good works make a decent person into one’s friend? In part, because such works cause the decent person to feel goodwill toward one in return (1167a14–15). But Aristotle notes that it is not the receiving but the doing of favors that is especially characteristic of a friend (1167b17–18). He goes on (in IX.7) to explain this fact by considering why benefactors love their beneficiaries more than the reverse. He says that the real explanation seems to be “more natural (phusikōteron)” than the one people usually give (1167b29). It is not that benefactors love for their beneficiaries to live so that they may be repaid for the favor one has done them; rather, the one for whom one has done a good work is so to speak “one’s own work,” and so one loves him as being one’s own work, just as poets love their poems like children (1168a1–4). The cause of this, Aristotle says, is that one’s own being is choiceworthy and lovable to all, but we “are” by being at work, in activity; so the work we produce is “somehow the maker at work” (1168a5–7). Therefore we love our work, “because we also love to exist” (1168a8). Thus we have a “natural” love for all the works we produce (1168a8); but in the particular case of doing a favor or good work for someone, one’s action is something “noble,” and therefore “one delights in the one in whom this is present” (1168a10–11). That is, we love our beneficiaries as the “being-at-work” of our own noble deeds. Therefore, in doing good works or favors for the virtuous and decent person toward whom we feel goodwill and desire, we make that virtuous person into our own “work”; when we have done noble deeds for him, he is our own nobility at work. Yet we do not want merely to produce a friend like a poem; we want, as we saw above, to become as one with him in friendship, to share a “self” with him so to speak. Accordingly, Aristotle notes (in IX.6) that being “of the same mind” (hē homonoia) seems to be part of friendship as well. And he explains how this quality is present between decent people: Such being of the same mind exists among decent people; for they are of the same mind as themselves and as one another, being toward the same things (or the selves, tōn autōn) . . . wishing for both the just things and the advantageous things, and also aiming at these in common (1167b4–9).

Friends, then, are said to have the same mind—and therefore also the same self—because they are of one mind about what is good, both wishing for the same things and pursuing them together. In this respect, Aristotle says, they are unlike low or common people, who are not of the same mind

58

Kathryn Sensen

and cannot be friends, because each seeks more benefits while performing fewer good works, so that they do not have something common between them (1167b9–14). To understand how two friends can be “of the same mind,” then, we need to understand precisely how the virtuous friends pursue their ends in common; Aristotle goes on to give a detailed account of this in IX.8. Aristotle opens this subject by asking directly whether one ought to love oneself most, or someone else; for people blame self-lovers, and say that a decent person acts “on account of the noble,” and “for the sake of a friend, disregarding himself” (1168a34–35). However, Aristotle says, “the speeches are out of harmony with the deeds, and not without reason” (1168a35–b1); for, as he had said, “all of the marks of friendship toward others proceed from the self” (1168b5–6). Aristotle tries to resolve this contradiction by distinguishing between two kinds of self-love: those who reproach self-lovers refer to “those who take more money and honors and bodily pleasures” (1168b16–17); such people “gratify their desires (epithumiais) and generally their passions and the irrational part of the soul” (1168b19–21). But “no one” would say a “self-lover” is someone who was always “being serious” in acting “according to the virtues, and generally always gaining the noble for himself” (1168b25–28). Yet such a person would seem rather to be a self-lover, since he “takes for himself the things that are most noble and good most of all, and he gratifies himself in the most authoritative thing, and he suffers all things for this” (1168b28–31). And a human being seems most of all to be the most authoritative element, just as we call people “self-restrained” and “unrestrained” according to whether they obey their mind or not, “as if each person is this” (1168b34–35). Therefore, the one who “loves and gratifies this” would be most of all a self-lover. This account brings to light several important points. First, there is a contradiction in people’s beliefs about what our “self” is. On the one hand, “no one” calls a self-lover someone who obeys his mind in all things, but rather we call a self-lover those who gratify their desires and their passions. This usage implies that we understand our passions and desires to be our “selves” after all. On the other hand, we say that someone who restrains his passions is self-restrained (enkratēs), implying that our “mind” is most what we are. Why, then, do we never call a self-lover the person who obeys his mind, pursuing virtue and gaining the noble for himself? Aristotle points to this reason: because obeying mind or the most authoritative thing is not understood to mean simply doing what is best for oneself: one sacrifices the things “advantageous” for oneself for the sake of the “noble,” but the “nobility” one gains for oneself in place of those advantages is precisely the sacrifice of those advantages. If the sacrifice of these advantages were understood to be straightforwardly good for oneself,

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

59

it would not be a sacrifice at all; it would not be noble. So the nobility of the deed only exists if the deed is not understood as simply good for us; it is not a pursuit of our own good, but a sacrifice for something greater than ourselves, for instance a friend who is decent and virtuous. Thus it is no accident that the nobility at which virtuous deeds aim is not simply pleasant for the one who performs them; noble deeds as such are “at all times both painful and pleasant” (1166a28). And yet Aristotle brings to light that we do indeed believe that the “most noble” things are those that seem somehow also “good” for us “most of all” (1168b29–30). The confusion, it seems, is about whether what is “advantageous” for us is really what is best for us, or whether there is some greater good for ourselves, which we can gain for ourselves by serving something greater than our own advantage; through the painful overcoming of ourselves, we somehow attain what is best for ourselves. This point comes out with particular clarity later in the chapter, when Aristotle says that a serious person would even be willing to die for his friends and his country; for those who die for others “choose something great and noble for themselves” (1169a26). Precisely in dying for others, in ceasing to exist as themselves, they believe that they are choosing something great and noble for themselves. This powerful wish to have a good for ourselves that is somehow greater than ourselves can help us to understand how the best kind of friendship can be understood as something more than a love for what is merely useful or pleasant to ourselves: we love the virtuous friend as a good greater than ourselves, whom we therefore want to have as a friend to ourselves. That is, we love him for what he is, and not merely for what he can provide for us. Yet by bringing to light the way in which we somehow assume noble deeds to be best for ourselves, Aristotle helps us to see what is problematic about a friendship “of the good,” that is, a friendship between serious people who perform noble deeds for each other. For if serious people acknowledge that acting virtuously is really what is “most of all” good for oneself (as they implicitly believe already),25 then doing a noble deed for a friend is not after all a way of benefiting him, but rather of taking the better thing, the noble, for oneself. And if one therefore allows the friend to do the noble thing (as Aristotle mentions one might) this would “be even more noble” than doing it oneself (1169a33)—so one is still taking the best thing, the most noble thing, for oneself.26 As much as we try to sacrifice our good for the friend, there is no way for us to avoid seeing this sacrifice as being somehow the way to our own true happiness: “for every mind chooses the best thing for itself, and the decent person obeys the mind” (1169a17). Now this problem—though it ends up seeming rather farcical in the case of two friends each trying to allow the other to do the more noble thing— is an absolutely crucial one for the friendship between decent or serious people; for we saw that these friends were said to be “of the same mind” as

60

Kathryn Sensen

one another because they wished for and aimed at the same things in common, namely “the just things and the advantageous things” (1167b8). Yet it has now become clear that their good is not truly common after all: when one friend does the virtuous thing for the sake of the other, one of them gains the noble, while the other gains mere advantage. And insofar as they agree, being decent people (1168a33–34), that the noble is better than the advantageous (1168b29–30), their good is to some extent at odds, and is not really something they pursue together; they will be “competing for the noble” (1169a8–9), and not sharing a good in common. Like the low people who cannot be friends because each seeks more benefits and fewer good works, the decent people will each seek to do more good works and receive fewer so-called benefits (1167b9–14). Thus decent friends are not after all “of the same mind,” nor do they see clearly what they are doing in seeking to benefit the decent friend and so make him “their own.” Yet Aristotle does not present this critique of the nobility of serious friendship in order to disillusion us about what we love most in life. Rather, this account helps us to begin to understand our own souls and our friendships more adequately. For if two friends come to see the character of their own wishes in trying to make sacrifices for one another, how their own deepest wish in making those “sacrifices” is for the good for themselves, that need not mean that the friends will stop loving one another. Rather, this realization encourages them to try to understand their friendship in terms other than self-sacrifice—that is, to understand how it is that their loved friend, along with virtue as a whole, is an important part of the happiness for which they wish. And such an approach to friendship and virtue, viewed in light of one’s own deep concern for the good, promises to be less painful than an understanding of friendship and virtue as involving self-sacrifice or self-overcoming. Yet it is not only for this reason that a truer understanding of friendship and virtue is desirable. For, as Aristotle notes, each person wishes for the good things for himself, while being “whatever it is that he is” (1166a22); but Aristotle shows that, underlying the decent person’s pursuit of the noble, there is a fundamental confusion about what he himself is, what is moving him, and what is good for him. He believes that in acting virtuously he is obeying his “mind,” and is not moved by desire and passion; he is obeying reason (1169a1), and not the “irrational part” of himself (1168b20). Yet he also believes that, in obeying his “mind,” he is doing what is good for himself most of all (1168b30). And this fact indicates that he is not after all rising above his desires in acting virtuously; rather, he is moved by “self-love” and the “desire” for what is good for himself (1169a12, a5–6). He differs from low or common people not in being unmoved by desire, as he believes, but rather in being moved by a desire for a greater good for himself than mere pleasure or advantage. But if he is then mis-

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

61

taken in his belief that he is obeying pure “mind” or reason in contradistinction to desire, then he is fundamentally confused in his view that he “himself” is mind and not his body and the desires that belong to it. And we saw that this view of himself as having two separate parts or natures is what allowed him to believe that a friend could be “another self,” in spite of their bodily separation. Our powerful belief in the nobility of our love for a friend who is “another self” thus testifies to the depth of our own lack of self-understanding, our own ignorance of what we are and so of what is truly good for us. Accordingly, our passionate longing to have a good person as a friend to ourselves, when we become aware of the real nature of that longing, points us toward trying to understand what is truly good for us, and what it is that makes friendship good.

THE “MORE NATURAL” VIEW OF FRIENDSHIP Aristotle guides us toward a more adequate understanding of these matters in the following chapter, IX.9, in which he takes up directly the question of whether or not a happy person needs friends (1169b3–4). This question only comes to sight now, after Aristotle has made clear in the preceding chapter that the virtuous person too is a self-lover; for insofar as virtuous friends had so far been understood to be selflessly doing good for one another, that friendship was not justified by its contribution to one’s own happiness, but as being a part of one’s virtue. But now that Aristotle has made us aware of our own self-concern underlying our pursuit of virtue and friendship, it has become urgent to understand what contribution friendship can make to that great good we desire for ourselves, which we call “happiness.” Accordingly, Aristotle here introduces the subject of happiness for the first time in his whole discussion of friendship.27 He begins the chapter by noting that it is disputed whether a happy person will need friends or not; for it is claimed that those who are blessed and self-sufficient are in need of nothing, because the good things belong to them (1169b3–5); so, being self-sufficient, they do not have any additional need for a friend, who—being a “different self”—supplies the things one is unable to supply through oneself (1169b5–7). Now Aristotle does not specify who it is that holds this view, but these assertions about what it means to be happy are in fact the very ones made by the serious or morally virtuous people themselves, as Aristotle had spelled out in Book I.28 In responding to their view, Aristotle now points us toward a sounder understanding of happiness, by setting forth a variety of arguments as to why one does indeed need friends in order to be happy. Aristotle’s first response to their challenge is to say that it seems to be “absurd” to assign all good things to the happy person but not to grant him friends, since friends “seem to be the greatest

62

Kathryn Sensen

of the external goods” (1169b9–10). With this characterization, he suggests that friends are not internal goods, being “one soul” or a “different self,” but external to one’s own self or soul (1168b7, 1169b6–7). Nonetheless, friends are very good and even essential for being happy, he suggests. For, in the first place, “no one would choose to have all good things by himself,” because human beings are political and “naturally live together” with others (1168b17–18): that is, we are not naturally solitary beings, but naturally need to live with others, and take pleasure in being with others—especially those who are friends and who are decent, more than strangers or any chance person (1169b20–22). For a human being, then, there is no such complete “self-sufficiency” as we somehow believe the “blessed” ones to possess; self-sufficiency does not accord with our natures.29 “Therefore friends are needed by the happy person” (1169b22). But if the activities of a happy person are good and pleasant in themselves, why would he need to bring in pleasure from outside (1169b26–27)? Aristotle’s reply (though rather complicated) seems to be principally30 this: a happy person is not one to whom happiness belongs like some possession (1169b30)—as the serious person’s view of the happy person as being “blessed” implies—but someone who is being active in some way, because living means being in activity (1169b29–31). And even when one’s activities are themselves good and pleasant, that does not mean that they are fully self-sufficient or solitary. For we may be better able to contemplate those near to us than ourselves, and their actions more than our own (1169b33–35).31 In addition, it is thought that one needs pleasure to live happily, but the solitary way of life is “difficult,” while it is easier to be active with others and toward others; thus shared activities will be more continuous, being pleasant in themselves (1170a5–7). Finally, Aristotle notes, some training in virtue might come about from living with those who are good (1170a11–12). To sum up, there seem to be three key reasons that we need to live with those who are good and similar to ourselves: we need to contemplate others in order to observe better the human soul and human life, and thereby also our own souls and lives; we need to be active with and toward others whom we like so that our activities, in being shared, may be more pleasant and more continuous; and we need to live with those who are good in some way we are not, so that we may learn to be virtuous from them. Good friends, in short, make our activities both better and more pleasant, and so make our lives happier as well. Aristotle goes on to provide a deeper understanding of these concerns in the argument that follows, which is a “more natural” (phusikōteron) inquiry into why a serious friend “seems to be by nature choiceworthy for a serious person” (1170a13–4). This “more natural” inquiry turns out to be a dizzyingly complex argument about the serious person’s need for a serious friend.32 It would require too long a discussion to cover all of the details of

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

63

it thoroughly here, but we will try to see its most relevant or important features. The main emphasis in the argument, somewhat surprisingly, is not on why we need friends, but on living itself, and what it is that makes living good and pleasant;33 through his account of the goodness and pleasure of living, Aristotle brings to light the deepest grounds of our need for friends. Aristotle begins the argument as follows: Living (to zēn) is “defined” for animals by the capacity for perception, and for human beings by the capacity for perception or thought (1170a16–17); but the capacity leads toward the activity, and so living in the authoritative sense means actively perceiving or thinking (1170a17–19). This suggests that life is not something that is simply present to one, but one’s living “comes to be” to a greater or lesser degree (cf. 1169b30), according to the use one makes of one’s capacities: one is most alive as oneself when one’s natural capacities are put into activity to the fullest extent possible. But if this is the case, then living as a human being should mean actively perceiving and thinking: in saying instead that we live by “perceiving or thinking,” Aristotle seems to follow the serious person’s view that we have two separate natures, one we share with the animals (perceiving) and one we share with god (thinking). Does a human being then live as two separate beings? Aristotle’s next remark clarifies the answer to this: “Living is among the things good and pleasant in themselves; for it is determinate (hōrismenon), and the determinate belongs to the nature of the good” (1170a19–21). Why do the goodness and pleasure of life depend on life’s being “determinate” or limited or marked by a boundary? There seem to be two obvious senses in which life is determinate: any life is the life of a particular, limited being with specific capacities that make it what it is, and that “define” what living means for that being (1170a14).34 Therefore, living as that being means using its specific natural capacities (cf. 1170a16–19): “living” means something different for a gnat versus a dog versus a human being, and so what is “good” and “pleasant” for the life of each differs as well. But if living is defined for a human being by both the capacity for perception and the capacity for thinking, then what is good and pleasant for human beings must be found in using those two capacities, and not one of them alone (that is, mere thinking). Yet there is another sense in which the life of every particular being is determinate or limited, namely in the sense that it comes to an end: the most obvious limit or boundary of life is death itself.35 But if part of what Aristotle means by the determinate quality of life is that it comes to an end, how can he present this as the reason that life is good and pleasant? In the very opening of the Ethics Aristotle had given us an indication about that: he begins the Ethics by noting that all human pursuits seem to aim at some good (1094a1–2), and he asks whether there is one end we wish for on account of itself, while we wish for all of the others on account of this one (1094a18–19). If we choose everything on account of something else, he

64

Kathryn Sensen

suggests, our choices would tend “toward the unlimited,” making our desire empty and vain (1094a20–21); but if there is one inherently choiceworthy end on account of which we choose all the others, this would be “the good and the best”—and this highest good, he notes soon afterward, is what we call “happiness” (1094a22, 1095a1). Now this line of thought suggests that the character of happiness itself, as a complete good or end at which we are aiming, depends on the limitedness of life, on our mortality: it is precisely because we can act for the sake of some end beyond the present (because we can “think” of the future and not merely “perceive” what is before us), and yet that process cannot go on “without limit,” that we look to a “highest good,” a complete end called happiness, at which to aim in our pursuits. For animals who perceive only what is present, and for a being who is pure thinking and so immortal, there is no fundamental distinction between the good and the pleasant: “the god always enjoys a pleasure that is one and simple” (1154b26). In short, the specifically human capacities for perceiving and thinking, which themselves depend on our bodily nature and so imply mortality, lead us to seek a good distinct from pleasure. And if our lives themselves had no end then we would have no ultimate end at which to aim—our lives would not be a larger whole with a view to which we could make choices at each moment, but only an unending series of moments. In this sense, then, it is the limitedness of life that makes living not merely “pleasant” but “good” for human beings: for our awareness of our mortality leads us both to savor the pleasures of life as much as we can (cf. 1175a15–17), and also to seek a good greater than mere pleasure. This human concern for a good greater than pleasure helps to illuminate a third meaning of “determinate”: hōrismenon also means “ordained” or laid down. For in looking toward a “highest good” by which to guide our limited lives, we also look toward a higher law or principle to which to conform ourselves; wishing for ourselves “to live and be saved” (1166a17–18), we do not interpret the “good” to mean simply what is good or advantageous for the limited beings we are—as our consideration of the noble also indicated— but to mean good in itself, and therefore also good for us. In accordance with this, Aristotle begins his explanation of why a serious friend is “by nature choiceworthy” for the serious person by making this remark: “the good by nature was said because, for the serious person, good and pleasant are in themselves” (1170a14–16).36 Thus when Aristotle says that living is good and pleasant because it is “determinate,” he also means that it is because it is “ordained,” because it takes place within the moral or natural limits laid down for human beings. And this consideration helps to explain the (otherwise puzzling) sequel to Aristotle’s remark about the “determinate”: the good by nature is also good for the decent person; therefore it seems to all to be pleasant; but one must not take wretched and corrupt living, nor in pain;

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

65

for such living is unlimited (aoristos), as are the things that belong to it (1170a21–24).

That is, what makes the “good by nature” seem pleasant “to all” is that it is also good for a decent person, in other words that one’s own good can be found in living according to something good in itself; and wretched and corrupt living is such because it is “unlimited,” in other words it does not conform to the moral or natural limits ordained for us. And if the good by nature is also good for a decent person, then living “in pain” must likewise be the result of one’s own “wickedness,” of failing to be truly decent (1154b29–31). Yet, as we spelled out above, the characteristics ascribed to the decent person are not really possible for any human being to possess fully: they depend on having a “simple” nature rather than a composite one, and therefore the simply pleasant life we ascribe to the decent person is not within our reach either: acting for the noble, as we saw, means doing something both “painful and pleasant.” So as a result of trying to live according to only one of the two “natures” or capacities that define us, and not as the composite beings we naturally are, we end up with a life that is painful, and we take this to be a sign that we are wicked (ponēros,37 1154b23, 29): but “such living is indeterminate,” because it is based on an attempt to live according to something other than our own nature (1170a24). We tend to seek the remedy for this pain, however, not by trying to understand our own natures more adequately, as Aristotle helps us to do, but by trying to “have” or possess a decent person as a friend to ourselves. Aristotle points to this thought in his next remark: “what concerns pain will be more apparent in the things we hold dear (tois echomenois)”—or, as this can also be translated, “in the things that follow” (1170a24–25). What “follows” is a very long and complex conditional sentence. It starts out with the suggestion that “living itself” seems to be good and pleasant “from the fact that all desire it, and most of all those who are decent and blessed; for their way of life is most choiceworthy and their living is most blessed” (1170a26–29). This implies that what makes us most desire to live is the fact that those who are decent, who live according to what is “good in itself” (1170a15–16), live a life that is blessed—that is, that living has the potential to become blessedly good and pleasant in itself if we are decent people who live in accordance with the highest good. But this implies that, in painfully trying to control or overcome our lower natures in order to be “decent,” the pleasure that we take in our virtue must lie principally in perceiving it as virtue, in perceiving ourselves to be doing what is decent and therefore worthy of being blessed.38 And this pleasure is essential because we believe that the happy life must be both good and also pleasant (1170a4), while the virtuous actions themselves are not inherently pleasant (cf. 1117b15–16). But because a serious person perceives his own goodness

66

Kathryn Sensen

not as being directed simply toward himself, but as conforming to the good in itself, this means that he does not perceive himself simply through his own eyes, but so to speak through the eyes of the “good in itself”—he perceives and judges himself from the perspective of the simply good. And if he is to take a pleasure in perceiving his own goodness that is strong enough to make up for the countervailing pain of being virtuous, and make him hopeful of being happy and blessed, then he will need not only to perceive his own decent actions, but to perceive that those actions are perceived by someone good in himself. This somewhat complex point is indicated by Aristotle in the rest of this very complex sentence, in which he spells out this process of perceiving ourselves and being perceived: If . . . the one who sees perceives that he sees, and the one who hears that he hears, and the one who walks that he walks, and toward the others similarly there is some perceiving that we are in activity, so that in perceiving [we would be perceiving] that we perceive, and in thinking that we think, but [to perceive] that we perceive or think [is to perceive] that we are (for existence was said to be perceiving or thinking), and perceiving that one lives is among the things pleasant in itself (for living [is] good by nature, and it is pleasant to perceive the good that belongs to oneself), and to live [is] choiceworthy and most of all to the good, because to exist is good to them and pleasant (for perceiving also/with the good in itself is pleasant), and as the serious person is toward himself, also toward the friend (for the friend is a different self); then just as to be oneself is choiceworthy to each, in this way also to be the friend, or to resemble him (1170a29–b8).

To simplify, what Aristotle indicates in this passage is this: the goodness and pleasure of life depend on perceiving ourselves in activity (a29–32), and so as being and living (a33–b1), and so as having something good (b2), and especially something that is not merely good for the limited beings we are, but something that is also good “in itself” (b5), which promises us some good greater than any good we could attain on our own. And the lives of those who are good are thought to be most choiceworthy (b3), because they take pleasure in perceiving something also good in itself, which makes their lives good and pleasant in themselves (b4–5); and so we want to perceive that we are good, and to be perceived by the good as being good (1170b8–10); and in perceiving ourselves and being perceived as being good, we feel the great pleasure of expecting to become completely happy or “blessed” (1170b14). As Aristotle says in the final sentence of this chapter, serious friends are needed by “the one who will be happy” (tōi eudaimonēsonti, future tense) (1170b18). Now good or serious friends, Aristotle indicates, play several key roles in this process of perception, some healthier than others. In the first place, a good friend is someone considered good in himself who lives together with

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

67

one (1170b11), and so perceives and confirms one’s own goodness or virtue (1170b10–11), and loves one for it. The friend thus fulfills a vital function in recognizing, confirming, and rewarding one’s own goodness or virtue; and this perception of one’s virtue by someone good is particularly essential (as we have noted) when that virtue is not understood as being directly good for oneself, but is directed toward a greater good, and only in that indirect way good for oneself as well.39 So one needs a friend to perceive one’s own goodness, and this “perception of oneself as being good” is said by Aristotle near the end of the argument to be the reason that it is “choiceworthy to exist” (1170b8–9). Second, the serious person does not merely want to be perceived by his virtuous friend, but also to perceive that friend. And the main reason the serious person wants to perceive his friend, Aristotle suggests, is this: he perceives that friend as being “his own,” as belonging to himself or being his “other self” (1170b6); and in “having” this virtuous friend for himself, he believes that he himself “has” the friend’s goodness or virtue, the virtue that promises complete happiness (1170b2). It is precisely because his friend’s goodness is something greater than what is merely useful for himself that he feels a much more powerful love or longing for that friend than for someone merely useful or pleasant to himself, and wishes to become “one” with the good friend. Accordingly, Aristotle concludes his long conditional sentence by saying that, just as it is choiceworthy to the serious person to be himself, “in this way it is choiceworthy also to be his friend . . . ” (1170b8).40 He thus suggests that what the serious person seeks, in making a good person into his “other self,” is to be that good person.41 Yet we have seen that Aristotle casts doubt on this perception of the friend as an “other self”; in his description of perception quoted above, he clarifies the problem further, by bringing to light how we come to think of ourselves as a “self” at all, that is, how it is that we are aware of ourselves and of our lives as our own. That self-awareness, he suggests here, comes about through our own perception of our activities, our “perceiving that we perceive or think” (1170a32–33). In perceiving ourselves either as perceiving or as thinking, we perceive that we “are” (1170a33). But this perception seems to lead us to conclude that we “are” two different things, either perceiving “or” thinking, either body or mind (1170a33). Yet the secondary perception of oneself in activity, as Aristotle presents it here, shows that this division in us between perceiving and thinking is not genuine: whether we are perceiving or thinking, it is still the same thing “perceiving” that activity (1170b1). So Aristotle’s account indicates that our “self” is both our bodies and our minds, and that our self-awareness depends on having bodily sense perception along with our thinking42; our “self” is not pure “thinking” because pure thinking cannot “perceive” itself as a self.43 And this in turn implies that “we” and our friend cannot share one being: two different bodies

68

Kathryn Sensen

cannot share “one soul” (1168b7).44 The friend cannot truly be one’s “other self.” But Aristotle concludes this chapter by noting that “that which is choiceworthy to the self, this must be possessed in the self, or one will be deficient in this” (1170b17–18). That is, the goodness of the friend must come to be present in oneself, if it is to be good for one, and not merely present in one’s “other self.” Our desire to have the good friend as another self thus reveals our fundamental concern with virtue, with having a good for ourselves that is greater than ourselves, through which we may hope to “live and be saved.” Aristotle makes clear that the virtue of the friend cannot truly be possessed by seeking to make the friend one’s “self” or one’s own. And yet, he says, there is a genuine way for friends to “perceive together” (sunaisthanesthai), namely through “sharing speeches and thoughts, and not as among fatted animals, by taking in the self” (1170b13–14). We are not able to subsume the good person’s self into our own, but we are able to talk with him, through which we can perceive his thoughts and share our own. In learning from or with a good friend, we can become better ourselves; and to the extent that he can learn through this activity as well, there is a true common good between the friends. Aristotle accordingly points to a sounder way of seeing the inherent goodness of the loved friend as being also good for oneself: namely, by seeking to “resemble” the good friend rather than possess him (1170b8). The last chapter of Aristotle’s discussion of friendship presents friends as making each other “better” by “putting each other into activity” and “straightening one another out”; and the friends “stamp onto themselves the things they find pleasing in one another” (1172a11–13). Now such learning might seem to come about most easily in a friendship with someone who is better and wiser than oneself. But Aristotle also points to two important reasons for seeking a friendship with someone similar to oneself. First, he had suggested earlier in this chapter that we are able to “contemplate” those near us more easily than ourselves; so insofar as we spend our days with someone most similar to us, we will also be able to see ourselves better. And his discussion of perception has pointed to the crucial importance of such seeing: for his account suggests that we naturally tend toward a radical misunderstanding of our own natures and of ourselves. One problem with this, as we have suggested, is that this misunderstanding ends up making life more painful for us (1154b23). But an even bigger problem with it would seem to be this: Aristotle’s account of our self-perception indicates that it is only by perceiving ourselves in activity that we come to have a “self” at all (1170a33); and this would seem to imply that a person who is radically misperceiving himself is in a way not even living as himself. And yet our fundamental desire, Aristotle indicates, is to have the good things as ourselves, being “whatever it is that one is,” and not by becoming something else (1166a22). Therefore, our wish to have the good

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

69

things for ourselves should also lead us to seek knowledge of “what it is that one is”: for “it would be strange if someone were to choose the life not of himself but of another” (1178a3–4). So “sharing speeches and thoughts” with a friend who is similar to oneself may be essential for the friends’ urgent task of coming to understand themselves and what they are. And because we also take pleasure in living with those who are akin to us, the pleasant contemplation of such a friend will also bring us into activity and so bring us to life (1175a10–13), which is what we desire (1175a16). Aristotle’s “more natural” inquiry into friendship reveals, most fundamentally, the depth of our concern with living in accordance with a good higher than ourselves, and at the same time the necessity of seeking that good as the determinate beings we are: our true “virtues” must be “the virtues of the composite” that we are (1178a20–21). These deep concerns, and our apparent ignorance of how to address them, would thus seem to point to our need to seek knowledge of ourselves, and of what is truly good for ourselves, in the light of what is good “in itself.” And in all three of these respects, Aristotle steers us toward an inquiry into “nature”: for in Aristotle’s teaching, our “nature” is what we fundamentally are (cf. 1114b9–12), and the best life for us is said to be the one appropriate to us “by nature” (1178a5), and the “good in itself” is equated with the “good by nature” (1170a14–16)—indeed, the highest and “most divine” thing is ultimately presented by Aristotle as ruling and leading us “according to nature” (1177a14). So in making us aware of our own deepest concerns and our ignorance of how they can be met, Aristotle encourages us to pursue those concerns specifically through an inquiry into nature, that is, by pursuing philosophy: “for it belongs to the good person to work hard at the good” (1166a15–16). And this serious pursuit of wisdom about the good for which we wish can, he suggests, be made both better and sweeter in being shared with a loved friend: Aristotle’s treatment of friendship culminates in an image of friends who “philosophize together” (1172a5). It turns out that the best kind of friendship, then, is not one in which the friends nobly disregard themselves for the sake of one another, as they are said to do. Yet these human speeches about friendship should not be disregarded, because they serve to reveal our own natures to ourselves: our belief in a selfless love for one’s friend is shown by Aristotle to be rooted in our erotic desire to possess for ourselves a good greater than ourselves; and this desire, when rightly understood, makes possible a friendship that aims at a good higher than either pleasure or utility: the “friendship of the good” points us toward the seeking in common of wisdom about the great good each wishes for himself. And in this activity, Aristotle indicates, the friends’ lives become as united as two human lives can be: for it is by “sharing speeches and thoughts” that human beings are able to “perceive together,” and so also to “live together” (1170b11–13).

70

Kathryn Sensen

Such a friendship greatly increases45 and sweetens one’s own life, and aids one’s pursuit of the good. On this view, our lives are indeed made much happier and better by friendship, that is, by sharing our activities and lives with someone we love as being akin to us and good; but our lives need not be quite as radically deficient on their own terms as we initially felt them to be. For when virtue and friendship are defined in terms of self-sacrifice, our inherently painful activities need to be completed by the pleasant perception of them together with a virtuous friend.46 But in coming to understand our own natures better, our pursuit of virtue may come to entail less pain or self-overcoming, making our need for a compensating pleasure less acute. While Aristotle had begun his discussion of friendship by noting that “without friends, no one would choose to live,” his “more natural” consideration of friendship leads us toward a less extreme view of friendship: “no one would choose to have all the good things by himself” (1169b17–18). In Aristotle’s presentation, friendship is natural to us, and therefore it is essential to sweetening our naturally limited lives and aiding our pursuit of the true good for which we wish. Friends, accordingly, are finally said by Aristotle to love one another both “on account of virtue” and “on account of themselves” (1171a19). Philosophic friends love one another both for what they are, as being akin, and as aiding one another’s pursuit of virtue; their friendship thus combines the pleasant and the good.47 Accordingly, the quintessential activity of the best kind of friendship, as Aristotle presents it, can be found in reading and discussing his Ethics, together with someone who is both akin to oneself and good.48

NOTES 1. The Greek “philia” has a broader meaning than does “friendship” in English; philia can refer to all bonds of affection, though its primary meaning is captured by the English “friendship.” Cf. Lorraine Smith Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2; and Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 354–55. In general, I found Pangle’s analysis of Aristotle’s treatment of friendship to be the most helpful one, and this essay is indebted to it. 2. All references in parentheses are to the page and line numbers of the I. Bywater edition of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894). All italics in the quotations are mine, not Aristotle’s. Translations are my own. 3. Cf. e.g. 1157b16–17, 1160a7–8, 1162a16–18, 1167b29, 1168a8, 1169b18–20, 1170a1. 4. Or likeable (philēton), cognate with friend (philos) and friendship or affection (philia). 5. Compare Book II.3, where Aristotle identifies three things that lead to choosing: “noble, advantageous, pleasant” (1104b31). Aristotle’s omission of the noble

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

71

from the list of lovable objects in Book VIII is particularly notable given his repeated insistence earlier in the Ethics that morally virtuous actions are performed “for the sake of the noble” (cf. 1115b13–14). 6. Cf. Plato’s Lysis, 219d. 7. By connecting friendship to all three lovable objects, and not merely the two that are loved as ends, Aristotle implies that a friendship need not be an end in itself in order to qualify as friendship. 8. Cf. Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, 43. 9. Cf. Plato’s Lysis, 215b. 10. Cf 1175a10–17, on the relation between loving and pleasure: we take pleasure in what we love. 11. Aristotle notes, for instance, that old people tend to take less pleasure in living together as friends (1156a24–30). 12. As Aristotle points out, in a friendship of bad people, the friends “become corrupt in becoming like one another” (1172a9–10). 13. Cf. 1166b13–17: “corrupt people seek others to pass their days with” as a way of “fleeing from themselves”; for when they are with others they “forget” many unpleasant things. 14. It is noteworthy that the first two of these characteristics are especially ascribed to friends by one group of people, while Aristotle indicates that “others” focus on the last two characteristics. The first two characteristics seem to be those which call for noble or apparently selfless concern for the friend, and these are the two that have come to light as being more problematic, given Aristotle’s emphasis on self-love. 15. After all, it would be odd to consider it praiseworthy for two friends to love each other as ends, if the friends did not believe that they themselves deserved to be loved as ends as well. 16. But Aristotle indicates that this assumption is not made on any chance basis; rather, “virtue and the serious person seem to be the measure of each” (1166a12–13). 17. Cf. Ronna Burger, “Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics,” The Bradley Foundation Lecture, Boston College, March 2001, 14. 18. Cf. also Aristotle’s De Anima 433a13–26. 19. In Book VI, by contrast, Aristotle had famously said that thought alone moves nothing (1139a35–36). 20. This last phrase is ambiguous in the Greek: in could be taken in a variety of ways, including “that which judges him,” “that by which he has sense or life,” or “that by which he has intentions or purposes.” But, since Aristotle is describing the decent or virtuous person, I assume he means here the specific reasoning capacity the virtuous person exercises in acting virtuously, namely prudence. 21. “To live” is “zēn,” which refers specifically to animal life (an animal is zōon), unlike the more neutral “to be” (einai). 22. Cf. Plato’s Phaedo, 64a. 23. Cf. VII.7, 1150a9–13: the virtue of moderation is not included in the list of ways one can be regarding the pleasures and pains and desires and aversions arising from touch and taste; it is only a matter of being more or less self-controlled.

72

Kathryn Sensen

24. In Books III and IV, Aristotle depicts the moral virtues as they appear to us and as they are believed to exist, as being “pleasant in themselves” to the virtuous person; unlike the pleasures of most people, the pleasures of the virtuous person do not “do battle” with one another (1099a11–15). But in Book VII the one example Aristotle gives of someone who is so “exceedingly good” as to seem almost “divine” is Hector—whose courage had been mentioned in Book III as being of a kind inferior to the virtue of courage proper, since he was moved in part by shame (1145a20–22, 1116a22–29). 25. It is important to see that this is not a reductive interpretation of virtue that Aristotle somehow imposes on the virtuous person; rather, Aristotle shows that it is in fact what the virtuous person already believes, although he has not made that fully clear to himself. His implicit belief can be brought to light by asking him whether acting virtuously is what is best for us or not: when pressed on the question, the virtuous person will much sooner admit that virtue is what is best for us than that it is bad for us (1168b29–30). 26. Joe Sachs notes that “a careful reader may see that one further step would allow the friend the still greater satisfaction of giving up the action to oneself, and a sophistical reader might say this led to an infinite regress. A thoughtful reader will see that the equality and commonality sought in friendship have here been realized, and that the pleasure is the same for both in either case.” Cf. Joe Sachs, ed., Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2002), 174 n 270. In this respect, Sachs himself is a good illustration of the serious person’s resistance to making fully clear to himself whether acting nobly means being a self-lover or not. For what Sachs says would be true only if the virtuous person realizes that nobility is best for oneself in the case of the noble deed for which he and his friend are in competition, but then does not think through that premise to see that it also applies to his nobly allowing his friend to do the noble deed. Moreover, the friend himself will feel the same pleasure only if he continues to believe that acting nobly does not simply mean taking the best thing for oneself—that is, only if the two friends are not “of the same mind” about what is best for oneself in that case. 27. Cf. Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, 183. 28. Cf. 1097b8, 1097b14–15, 1098a19, 1099b17–18, 1101a18–19. In spelling out the “things that are said about” happiness in Book I (1098b10–11), Aristotle presents an increasingly extreme view of how complete or perfect happiness is, after repeatedly specifying the sort of listener he is addressing, namely those who make their desires according to reason, and who start from a belief in the goodness of moral virtue (1095a10–11, 1095b4–7). It is these listeners who believe, as he ends up putting it, that happiness is an end to which one cannot add even “the tiniest amount of additional good” (1097b17–18), because it is already “completely perfect in every way” (1101a19). The ground for this view of happiness is spelled out at 1099b16–18: happiness appears to be “among the most divine things; for the prize of virtue and the end appears to be the highest good, and something divine and blessed.” 29. As Aristotle famously puts it in the Metaphysics, “human nature is enslaved in many ways” (982b30). 30. In light of the preceding chapters, I am setting aside the arguments he includes here about how one needs friends for whom to do noble deeds, and several related points based on a now-discredited view of friendship (cf. 1169b10–13).

On the Nature of Friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

73

31. Here I omit the additional argument that the actions of friends are pleasant to contemplate because they are one’s own (1170a1–3). Compare the preceding statement, in which actions of those near us are distinguished from our own (1169b35). 32. It is the longest argument in the whole of the Ethics, according to Ronna Burger, “Pleasure and the Good: on the Action of the Argument of Aristotle’s Ethics” (paper presented at the University of Chicago), 18. 33. This fact has been a source of frustration for a number of commentators; cf. John M. Cooper, “Aristotle on Friendship,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 318–19. It leads Cooper to go so far as to conclude that the whole “more natural” argument about friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics is “abortive” (Cooper, 320). I, naturally, do not agree with that view. 34. Cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1017b17. 35. As Sarah Broadie puts it, “Being alive is determinate because a dead human being or a dead mouse is man or mouse in name alone; it has no definite nature, because the nature of a substance is defined by reference to its typical activity . . . and death is cessation of activity. Moreover, life at its fullest is activity, which is determinate by comparison with the corresponding capacity or disposition.” Sarah Broadie and Christopher Rowe, eds., Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 427. Pangle interprets the meaning of life’s being “determinate” in a similar vein (Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship, 190). 36. This could also be translated, and is normally translated, along these lines: “For it was said that the good by nature is good and pleasant in itself to a serious person.” 37. “ponēros” means both “painful” and “wicked”: the fact that virtuous actions are painful for us is taken to be a sign that we are wicked. Cf. 1154b28–31. 38. Cf. 1174b16: the perception of the most noble things that belong to one “seems the most complete.” 39. John Cooper helpfully explains the matter this way: “As it is, we cannot, if left each to his own devices, reach a secure estimate of our own moral character; nor by ourselves can we find our lives continuously interesting and enjoyable, because the sense of the value of the activities that make them up is not within the individual’s power to bestow. The sense of one’s own worth is, for human beings, a group accomplishment. Hence we need each other because as individuals we are not sufficient—psychologically sufficient—to sustain our own lives” (Cooper, 331). My main reservation about Cooper’s way of putting this is his implication that no human being can or should try to rise above this dependence on the “group’s” valuations. 40. This is normally translated in a less surprising way: “just as one’s own being is choiceworthy for each, so too, or nearly so, is the being of a friend.” However, my translation seems to me to accord better with the grammar of the original, and in any case there would have been a much more natural way for Aristotle to express the other thought in Greek than the one he chose. 41. Cf. Aristotle’s criticism in the Politics of the lovers’ desire to become one, as portrayed in Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium: “Now here it must necessarily happen that both, or one of them, disappear” in the union (1262b14). 42. Cf. De Anima 434b9–11: a body is required for perception.

74

Kathryn Sensen

43. Cf. De Anima 431a17–18, on the dependence of thinking on sense perception. 44. Aristotle indicates this by switching from a description of one person’s selfperception to a description of perceiving ourselves along with others; and in this case he says there is “something (ti) perceiving that we are in activity” (1170a29–31), and this is a perception that “we are” (1170a33). “We” cannot perceive that “we are” but only “something” perceives that we are—it is always a perception by one individual being, there is no shared body and so no perception by the friends as a unit that “they” exist. 45. Good friends are said by Aristotle to “put one another into activity” (1172a12), which is to say that they bring one another to life. 46. In X.4 Aristotle suggests that this perception completes serious activities the way a doctor completes health—the perception is a remedy for what is inherently painful or unhealthy (1174b21–26). 47. However, that is not to say that there is no tension between the pleasant and the good in such a friendship; cf. 1096a12–17. Also, the best kind of friendship, while it is pleasant, may not necessarily be the sweetest or most pleasant one. 48. I wish to thank Harvey Mansfield for introducing me to the riches of Aristotole’s Ethics.

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 75

4 Aristotle and Liberalism Eric S. Petrie

Nothing grows clearer to me year by year than that the nature of the Greeks and of antiquity, however simple and universally familiar it may seem to lie before us, is very hard to understand, indeed is hardly accessible at all, and that the facility with which the ancients are usually spoken of is either a piece of frivolity or an inherited arrogance born of thoughtlessness (Nietzsche, Daybreak, Book III, #195).1

A longing dogs liberal democracy.2 One version of that longing leads liberals to seek a more robust account of the high purposes of life. In particular, the liberal individual’s attraction to a kind of aimless liberty leaves some moderns searching for more. Quite understandably, one turns to the classics for guidance and turns away from the pallid values of our skeptical age. Can one find in a classical author such as Aristotle a supplement to liberal political theory so as to imbue its practice with positive purpose and solid foundations? Can classical doctrines of virtue and the common good remedy liberal democracy’s aimlessness? Perhaps an Aristotelian liberalism could perfect our modern politics. We seek, then, an Aristotelian liberalism. Yet how can such a doctrine be anything more than a comical anachronism? The comedy lies in our attempt to improve modern times by a means that only draws us deeper into the modern character. Consider two examples. One could claim to return to the classical Greeks, as Hannah Arendt does in The Human Condition. Yet her recovery of Aristotle’s “public sphere” violently rearranges the original source material of the Greek republic in order to drape her own modern “Existenz philosophy” in classical trappings.3 Thus Arendt promotes a fundamentally modern version of free political action that escapes nature’s 75

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

76

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 76

Eric S. Petrie

meaningless cycles in the name of recovering the classical teaching. Or take J. G. A. Pocock’s discovery of an “Atlantic republican tradition” rooted in Aristotle’s “theory of citizenship and polity.”4 He restates in modern terms, without apology, the core of Aristotle’s teaching on the political community, where universal and particular come together in a “community of values” ordered by the common good. Pocock then allows Polybius and “the Renaissance mind” to transplant Aristotle’s “theory of polity” into a fundamentally modern cosmology. Thus, in the name of Aristotle’s politics, Pocock presents the un-Aristotelian problem of “politics in time,” in which “the polis [is] a structure of particulars seeking to maintain its stability— and its universality—in time.” In such a view, the political actor is not guided or supported by an understanding of nature; in a typically modern way, the citizen combats fortune and the cycles of a hostile nature.5 These recent attempts to restore Aristotle’s thought under modern conditions once again make timely Nietzsche’s warning, quoted above. The Greeks are, indeed, very hard to understand. And so the revival of Aristotle’s thought risks becoming a “frivolous” game of violent reinterpretation (as with Arendt) or a “thoughtless” reading of the present into the past (as with Pocock). A much better guide is Harvey Mansfield, who once remarked that “it is never superfluous to ask Aristotle’s opinion on any matter.”6 Yet in doing so, Mansfield never loses sight of the radical distance separating Aristotle and the modern age, a difference he characterized as follows: “Aristotle asserted or discovered an understanding of nature, contained in his notion of kingship, that was favorable to human ends and the human good. His purpose was to preserve the practical feasibility of behaving nobly, to enlighten the ambition of those who seek to act nobly, and thus to avoid making the Machiavellian princes sovereign.”7 Mansfield’s observation draws attention to the primary problem faced by anyone trying to make Aristotle speak to contemporary liberalism. Aristotle’s understanding of nature must be recovered along with any particular aspect of his moral and political teaching if that teaching is to retain its core. Separated from the cosmological context out of which the particular doctrines take on their meaning, Aristotle’s account of virtue or partisanship or the human good will only morph into some variation of the modern teaching. In such a context, the Machiavellian princes, coeval with politics, predominate. To speak of an “Aristotelian liberalism” reflects our modern paradox. We seek to know the distant past because the present disappoints us. And yet we are modern liberals; the exception should prove the case. Thus our study of Aristotle will always be a modern look back at the strange and challenging past. Is an Aristotelian liberalism possible? To answer this question, we must first ask, what is liberalism? Is it at all capable of supplementary corrections from classical political philosophy? Taking as our cue the core liberal concept of liberty, defined in terms of equal individual rights, we will

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 77

Aristotle and Liberalism

77

examine liberalism in three ways: with respect to the concept of nature that defines liberal rights; with respect to the equal individual who possesses those rights; and with respect to the constitutionally limited government that guarantees liberal rights. In the end, the root of liberal democracy will be found in a modern understanding of liberty that has so little to do with the classical past as to be an escape from it. Liberal liberty liberates citizens from classical virtue.

NATURAL RIGHT The fundamental concept of liberalism is the liberty of the individual grounded in natural right. This core concept of modern liberalism took its founding step when Thomas Hobbes wrote, “the right of nature . . . is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature.”8 Our freedom, one could say, rests on our will to stay alive. Preservation concerns us, not only because we are mortal, but also because our nature contains three powerful “causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly glory.” So effective are these sources of conflict that human beings, until government power overawes them, “are in a condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man” (L 13.88). Conceptually speaking, with the appearance of modern natural right, the modern individual also appears, and is at war with every other individual as a consequence of human nature. Our security is necessarily threatened, and our nature requires preservation. No more is needed to see the essential character of nature for the modern political philosopher. Nature is faulty, and it guides us only metaphorically, as we seek by means of human artifice to correct its defects. Thus for modern natural right, nature guides us primarily through the passion of fear, which impels us away from nature’s fundamental threat. But we are reminded that there are many kinds of liberalism, and that Hobbes himself was no liberal, despite his conceiving of the very idea of equal individual rights. Yet the origin of a concept reveals the core of that concept. The basis and purpose of individual right is never more adequately seen than through the individual’s terror at the natural situation. This fact remains true for the actual founders and developers of liberalism, including Kant, who abandons reliance on nature. In all these cases, the nature that supplied right’s meaning was neither intelligent nor supportive of human happiness. Consider for a moment John Locke. As with Hobbes, Locke’s original right of nature resides in an equal liberty to act as we please. Locke emphasizes that this liberty is not to be confused with license for we must follow

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

78

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 78

Eric S. Petrie

the law of nature, which requires that “every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully; so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind.” Thus Locke imagines a natural condition free from war in which all satisfy their needs in a condition of plenty. As he later makes clear, however, nature nonetheless empowers “the quarrelsome and contentious,” resulting in that same state of war about which Hobbes complained.9 Not only does Locke in the end agree with Hobbes’s picture of our natural condition, he adds a new misery along with a new right of property. In the key discussion of the origin of property in chapter five of the Second Treatise we find the main point. Prior to the invention of money, it seems that humankind lived in a kind of paradise, like the America that Locke envisioned, in which the world was so filled with plenty that all could satisfy their limited desires and leave “as good” for others. “This is certain,” writes Locke, “that in the beginning, before the desire of having more than man needed, had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; . . . though men had a right to appropriate by their labor, each one to himself, as much of the things of nature as he could use, yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left, to those who would use the same industry” (ST 34.291; 37.294). It seems that in the beginning there is enough for all, so that each can have what is needed. Yet, the “plenty” that Locke describes before the introduction of money he calls “waste” and “spoilage” after that point. Instead of complaining that humankind falls into sin as convention increases our desires, Locke changes his opinion about nature’s original fertility. Through the proper use of human labor, “the almost worthless materials” of nature are transformed into comforts and conveniences that are worth ten times, a hundred times, even a thousand times more to human beings than the raw natural materials. The human artifice of agreeing that “a little piece of yellow metal . . . should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn” thus changed a natural condition of privation into true plenty (ST 37.294). And the cascade of conventions that follows from the creation of money—the accumulation of wealth beyond immediate use, possession of land so that it becomes scarce, quarrels and contentions that lead to a state of war, the artificial creation of government—fulfills no natural plan, but only the conventional order of human beings as they manage the problems of nature’s disorder. What precisely does it mean for Hobbes and Locke to say that a human being possesses natural right? These founders of liberalism’s core concept seem to have posited a condition in which natural necessity reveals something universal to all human beings, a cry of the heart that seeks relief and

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 79

Aristotle and Liberalism

79

protests against the nearness of death (for Hobbes) or discomfort (for Locke). Not only could the passions of each individual be counted on to cry out for help, but sympathy from others could be anticipated insofar as all share the same natural situation. Discomfort and death always threaten when human artifice does not intervene. Thus is laid the basis for a democratic rebellion against nature. The concept of right, conceived under these threatening conditions of “the wild common of nature,” means a cry of protest, an unreasoning aversion that takes on the self-importance of one who thinks, in the midst of fear and discomfort, that “this should not be!” (ST 48.301). Our passionate claim of right protests against nature itself, the object of our righteous indignation. Humankind becomes a universal victim of nature, designed to feel varieties of pain on its way to natural decay and death. Nature thus orients the passionate protest by standing as the author of our woe, against which we can organize ourselves so as to remedy, by whatever artifices available, the necessities that impinge on our vulnerable bodies. Liberalism cares first for the natural body rather than the mind or the soul, for the struggles and the pains of our sensual natures could be seen as the training ground for a perfection of our higher nature. Yet maturity is not viewed as a waxing of the natural pleasures of mind and soul by Locke. On the contrary, too much youthful confidence, or too much attention to the pleasures of the mind, allows one to ignore the eventual decline of our faculties, a decline that ceases only in death. Thus not only is nature the enemy and victimizer, it touches us most truly in our bodily sensuality. The nature of modern natural right is our body in its vulnerability to pain and age, and the righteousness of our claim to life and comfort is less a matter of complex reasoning and more a passionate cry at the prospect of our decline. Now according to our authors, each one of us has by nature a right to survival, and that right first appears in the rightness of our being free to act in whatever way will support self-preservation. But if we ask why we have this right, and why it is right or just for us to act in this way, we receive no answer. This fact is revealing of the character of modern natural right. Modern natural right is not an argument about justice, like the partisan doctrines of the regimes in classical political science. The new political science turns, one can say, to the effectual truth of the matter, and not to imaginary or deliberative formulations that have the character of speeches to which we might or might not adhere. The rightness of modern natural right operates prior to such partisan formulations. And it crosses party divisions, for modern natural right speaks with the same voice to individuals both rich and poor, distinguished and free. It is not an argument that makes us conclude that we are right to preserve ourselves. According to Hobbes and Locke, we ourselves assert it all the time, in the necessary motions of our body, fleeing

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

80

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 80

Eric S. Petrie

what harms us, seeking what preserves our healthy living. And while our reasoned doctrines can lead us to put ourselves in harm’s way, the body nonetheless protests, and flinches or tightens with each duty. Modern natural right grounds itself solidly on nature’s pre-deliberative likes and dislikes. It is an observed fact, one could say, on the basis of which a deductive science is developed. And while arguments are offered to defend the rightness of modern right from critics, especially those arising from false religion (for instance, Hobbes’s elaborate attacks on “the kingdom of darkness”), in the end the basis of the doctrine remains its conformity to our body’s pre-deliberative protestation. The mechanistic aversion expresses itself as a protest, “NOT RIGHT!,” and manifests itself in the form of anger, the passion of justice. Modern natural right could be said to be founded in the unreflective anger of the body, which should be tutored but must not be forced to conform to an illusory higher standard. That anger at the same time speaks the language of justice. It could be said to be the simplest moral fact of nature. The problem of the origin of right appears in what seems to be a contradiction in Hobbes’s presentation of right. It would seem that there is no right by nature, according to Hobbes, for in the state of nature, where all are at war with one another, “the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place” (L 13.90). Justice, then, would seem to exist only by human artifice, as a merely human power creates a merely human law and order. Apart from such conventions, nothing would be right or just. Consistent with this view, Hobbes later claims that only enforceable contracts give rise to justice, saying that “when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust. And the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of a covenant” (L 15.100). Thus where there are no laws and no covenants, there is no justice. Yet he also argues that only a fool thinks that there is no justice (L 15.101), and Hobbes asserts that a right of nature does exist in our liberty to act as we will, as noted above (L 14.91). How can there be no notion of right and wrong in the condition of nature, and yet a right of nature? Hobbes consistently describes the natural state as both lawless and completely determined by the right of each. This lawless natural right means that “every man has a right to every thing” (L 14.91), so that where “nothing can be unjust,” right is not absent but active in every lawless deed. Where there is no injustice, it does not follow for Hobbes that there is no right. On the contrary, in the absence of conventional justice, anything we can do we have a right to do. Everyone’s preservation being every moment at risk, anything one might do to secure oneself would be right. Man is the animal that announces right or wrong as it moves, depending upon whether its motions are affections or aversions. And since this original claim of right is audible even in the snarl or whimper of unreasoning animals, the origin of right would be animal motion itself.

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 81

Aristotle and Liberalism

81

From a human perspective, nature is chaotic. It is as destructive of our well-being as universal war, and its guidance comes in the form of an unreflective imperative: flee pain and death! The rightness of the directive is not so much supported by reasoning as it is an assertion that we feel in our bones, one that supplies the beginning of reflection rather than its result. It would be hard to imagine a view of nature more opposed to the classical view than that of liberalism. For Hobbes, the reason of man is not needed to uncover natural right, except to listen to the cry of our strongest impulses, and then contrive to satisfy them. For Aristotle, nature forms an intelligible design supportive of our highest happiness and directs us there by means of our capacity for reflection. The best political regime, and justice, require a most subtle effort of reasoning, unveiling much complexity in the design of nature as it relates to human beings. Nature is purposive or teleological for Aristotle, as it first comes to sight in his Politics. For the purpose of reproduction, nature divides human beings into male and female; and for the sake of preservation, nature makes thought or mind rule as a master over the body.10 Similarly, the good and right political order is guided by a complex goal that is positively designed by nature’s intelligible order; the best is governed by a telos. Consider nature’s telos in two respects: how the political community gives purpose to the citizen; and how the hierarchy of our natural capacities gives purpose to the individual. The human being is a political being by nature, says Aristotle, for “it is evident that the city belongs among the things that exist by nature, and . . . man is by nature a political animal” (P 1253a2–4). Nature forms us to be parts of a larger whole, wherefrom we gain our self-sufficiency and our best condition. From the political community we acquire our self-sufficiency or completeness with respect to mere life as well as a good life, the life that is noblest or highest for us given our potential. When Aristotle defines the polis or political community, he makes clear how what is highest in us serves the political community and also gives the community its highest purpose. “A city is the partnership of families and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life,” he says, and this “is living happily and nobly. The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together” (P 1280b40–1281a4). Now it is true that the account of nature in Aristotle’s work cannot be left in this simple, even naïve, form. We are aware that almost from the start of the discussion of nature in the Politics, Aristotle notes irregularities in the account of how nature serves as guide or designer of political communities. For instance, the natural impulse to live in a self-sufficient polis does not necessarily lead to the development of such communities, let alone to regimes that are well designed. For without human law and justice, established by political action, the natural impulse may just as well result in human beings who are “the most unholy and the most savage [of the

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

82

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 82

Eric S. Petrie

animals], and the worst with regard to sex and food” (P 1253a29–37). And as to whether good human beings give birth to other good human beings, so that one can know whether the virtuous will have virtuous offspring, or slavish ones, Aristotle admits that “while nature wishes to do this, it is often unable to” (P 1255b3, 4). Thus the personification of nature as an intelligent guide admits of a problem from the start. Not only does its design depend on human convention for its realization but the design itself may be flawed, the product of unrealized intentions. Problems like this may well lead a careful student of Aristotle to question whether nature can be teleological for Aristotle. In one particularly comprehensive discussion of this matter, David Bolotin argues that Aristotle “misrepresent[s] his views about nature,” and that those misrepresentations include his open teaching that “there are . . . eternal and changeless forms, which by their action upon this substrate [which persists throughout all change] give rise to the natural beings;” and that “the development of a natural being is set in motion for the sake of the good toward which it tends.”11 I do not mean to make light of these difficulties. In fact, it seems to me that one cannot truly understand what Aristotle means by “nature” without pursuing in much greater detail than is possible here the problems in Aristotle’s accounts of nature that lead to Bolotin’s conclusion that “the world is not intelligible in the way that Aristotle pretends.” I suggest only that it remains crucial (even for Bolotin) to explain why Aristotle’s project required his exaggerations regarding nature, and how these exaggerations still reflect, in overstated form, “the manifest character—understood as the truest being—of the given world.”12 From this perspective, one would recognize that any return to Aristotle’s moral and political teaching must recover his unmodern account of nature as supportive of human purposes. Otherwise one merely grafts pieces of Aristotle’s thought onto our modern cosmological perspective. Thus Aristotle’s treatment of nature corresponds in no way to liberalism’s core teaching regarding right. It is hard to overstate the difference in outlooks. Liberalism, as a political project initiated by modernity, revolts against classical nature understood as a harmonious, intelligible order guiding human practice. On the contrary, liberalism’s nature embodies irrational disharmony. Natural impulse, moved by an almost animal sense of justice, culminates in a condition of complete war. The path out of our natural dilemma is the contrivance of a calculating rationality that takes its direction from the natural problem it strives to resolve. Aristotle’s teleological account of nature contradicts the cosmological perspective that makes liberalism intelligible. This contrast between Aristotle and liberalism comes to the foreground when we survey the topic of slavery within Aristotle’s moral and political philosophy. The condemnation of slavery in Hobbes and Locke is unequiv-

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 83

Aristotle and Liberalism

83

ocal. Our natural liberty flees enslavement as it does any constraint that threatens our preservation. And our subjection to government, for Hobbes, is willing and rational as long as it achieves our end of protection from violence and death. Whenever that subjection does not further our own preservation, we are right to escape it.13 Yet in the case of Aristotle, the teaching is much more complicated, and the condemnation of slavery is by no means clear. On the one hand, conventional or political slavery operates through force with terrible effect. “No one would assert,” says Aristotle, “that someone not meriting enslavement ought ever to be a slave” (P 1255a3–12, 25–26). Yet as beings acting within the necessary limits of a nature that guides us to perfection and happiness, we are nature’s subordinates. It would not be too much to say that we are slaves of nature according to Aristotle, a reflection that is more revealing of our condition than liberalism’s supposition that human freedom rebels against nature’s failings (P 1260a2–12). Moreover, human beings are subject to enslaving necessity, especially within the household, where the needs of the body are served and where, until those needs are satisfied, human beings toil under the slavery (however pleasant) of the body in need. As a consequence of fundamental reflections on the necessity of slave-like subordination in every human life, Aristotle never calls for a movement to end slavery through political action. Thus, in a fashion that must make modern defenders of Aristotle dodge or apologize, Aristotle refuses to make freedom the primary end of politics, and affirms the necessity, the naturalness, of slavery.

EQUAL INDIVIDUAL RIGHT Any definition of liberalism begins with the term “liberty,” the core concept of this modern doctrine of good government. What kind of liberty do liberals possess? The best answer, oddly enough, is indirect. Let us ask instead, who possesses liberal liberty? The owner of liberal liberty is the undifferentiated individual, an adult of the human species who originally was a fearridden mortal body (Hobbes) and then a calculating laboring body (Locke), but today is so indistinct as to be a self, mysteriously residing in an identity waiting to be empowered.14 Across these divergent conceptions of the liberal individual, lies the undefined, equal individual with sovereign authority. The liberty of this being is to consent to whatever demands are made on it from other human beings, and to be required to strive only as a calculation of necessity. For Aristotle, by contrast, liberty is the condition of every true virtue. A virtuous deed, as Aristotle explains, requires a voluntary choice. Yet free choice is constrained by higher standards by which that choice is judged.

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

84

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 84

Eric S. Petrie

The freedom from authority visible in virtuous choice does not free itself from judgment and condemnation. More importantly, the capacity to act freely depends upon established habit that is not grounded in liberty. In the end, the liberty of an Aristotelian citizen depends on the formation of character that resides in the force of the law (EN 1179b29–80a14). Liberal liberty, on the other hand, maintains its equal dignity even against the demands of virtue. In its latest version, all standards of judgment from outside itself are merely attempts to demean the undefined freedom of the individual and force it to conform to the values of some other person or group, values that reveal that person’s (or group’s) lust for power. Aristotle’s thought can provide no supplement to this liberal doctrine of equal individual right. Consider Aristotle’s rejection of the notion of equal right in his Politics. In the crucial discussion of the meaning of right or justice, Aristotle acknowledges that justice means equality, but equal parts for equals, and unequal parts for unequals (P 1280a7–14). Aristotle explicitly seeks “the whole of justice,” a definition that is not tied to either of the partisan positions to be found in every political community, democratic equality and oligarchic inequality. Justice that is not partial must give each partisan its due, and that means also recognize the right of unequals to inequality. Liberalism, whatever its complexities, rests upon a democratic understanding of right. It cannot look to Aristotle for support of its egalitarian principle of right. For Aristotle, there are a variety of legitimate regimes, all of which recognize the right of unequals as a part of the common good to which a legitimate regime is devoted. Democracy is a regime that seeks equality in partisan fashion and is therefore, simply speaking, unjust. And the polity (that just regime closest to democracy) is a mixed regime that recognizes the right of unequals to rule. But the rejection of democracy in Aristotle is even more obvious when one considers the justice of aristocracy and kingship. These regimes explicitly disempower the demos by excluding it from the offices that make political decisions. Ruled by the virtuous, these regimes gain their legitimacy from the fundamental right to inequality in Aristotle, which rests on the existence of practical wisdom and its superior claim to political power. There is a category of “the best” in politics, people with practical wisdom who rule by right over those who lack such wisdom. And while Aristotle argues at length for the need to combine this right of a few with the other powers in a political community, this compromise standard seems required by political necessity as much as by any genuine justice. Thus one finds in Aristotle numerous tactics recommended to bolster the power of the practically wise and lessen the influence of the unwise. Aristotle’s illiberal understanding of justice allows and even intends to dilute equal right with the rival right of the best to unequal political power.

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 85

Aristotle and Liberalism

85

Perhaps for this reason Aristotle’s condemnation of slavery is muted and difficult to discern in Book I of the Politics, as we have already noted. The right of unequals, for Aristotle, requires the subjection of most to the ruling decisions of the best. And while this rule requires the consent of the ruled in order to be legitimate (P 1284b28–34; 1288a24–29), it is hard to distinguish such subjection from what Aristotle defines as natural slavery, which would involve the beneficent rule of master over slave (P 1255b4–14). If we turn now to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, we will again see that our classical author provides no support whatsoever for the modern liberal individual. And one should not be surprised. As we have argued, the liberal account of the individual presupposes equal rights as it in turn justifies these rights. For Aristotle, the human individual does not occupy its own vacuum or free space of play. Instead, the individual (if that is the term for one man or woman) occupies a space codetermined by nature and convention, by the essential nature of the kind of being that it is, and by the political community to which it must belong if it is to realize its nature. As a consequence, whatever freedom a single human being possesses must be exercised within other, more significant phenomena of which it is a part, namely the political whole and the whole of nature. For Aristotle, the freedom to choose, and thus to act, forms a significant part of his account of moral virtue. Yet this freedom must be qualified in an important respect. Failure to choose correctly has its consequences. In choosing to act or not act according to virtue and its mean, we are not a selfcreating identity that reaches fulfillment by, say, its internal harmony, consistency, or authenticity. If our freedom is not used well, we are harmed as a consequence because unable to become the being that is our potential. In other words, the freedom to act for Aristotle has no status or dignity of its own, apart from its conformity to standards outside itself. It is certainly true that for Aristotle human beings possess a liberty to act in accordance with their understanding of what is good. Yet the exercise of this liberty remains very much subject to a discriminating evaluation. For Hobbes, by contrast, this liberty is subject to no higher natural standard. In his view, all use of liberty is by nature “right.” According to Aristotle, the only right uses of liberty are ones that serve our natural purpose and the prerequisites for achieving it, in particular the perfection of the political community within which virtue is enacted. On Aristotle’s account, nature does not necessarily produce the moral virtues; they are the product of law and habit, of education and imitation.15 Nature gives us the potential for these virtues, but our reasoning is needed to recognize the potential and raise it to a kind of perfection. In doing so, what freedom we possess is severely constrained and subject to judgment by its natural telos. Thus in the case of both the highest communal or moral

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

86

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 86

Eric S. Petrie

virtue and the highest individual virtue—theoretical virtue (EN 1177a18–22)—we are not so much free beings, as beings who are free to conform to the demands of our natural perfection. For Aristotle, human dignity does not “stand on its own bottom,” in contrast to the liberty guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For Aristotle, the quality or virtue of a decision does not depend on its individual uniqueness. To act rationally means to judge one’s action in the particular setting, in conformity with the standards of the moral virtues. The action, and the individual’s use of freedom in so acting, will take on its dignity, its virtue or its baseness, as the action conforms to what would best fit the circumstance, the mean as determined by the reason of the practically wise individual who understands the particular situation. Such judgment of the individual’s exercise of freedom is necessary, according to Aristotle. Thus dignity is not possessed intrinsically by all citizens as a function of their natural existence (as in some strands of liberalism). Instead, one’s dignity is contingent on the degree of virtue manifest in the exercise of one’s freedom, the extent to which one’s freedom is governed by the demands of human excellence and the needs of the political community. We cannot leave Aristotle’s moral actor without a comment on the importance of habit in the formation of moral virtue, for habit shows in practice the dependence of the individual on the orders outside oneself. However much the liberal individual realizes itself by expressing its creative will, the individual in Aristotle’s doctrine cannot realize its potential for excellence without submitting willingly to the laws of the political community, and more profoundly, without imitating the models of excellence visible in the community’s ruling regime. As Aristotle puts it, “we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. This truth is attested by what happens in political communities: lawgivers make the citizens good by training them in habits of right action—this is the aim of all legislation, and if it fails to do this it is a failure; this distinguishes a good regime from a bad one” (EN 1103a34–b6). Not only is the individual citizen subordinated to the political community by having the community’s good be a necessary factor in the determination of virtuous action, but the virtues themselves first become visible in the laws and the virtuous individuals who embody the excellence of the regime. Aristotle also uses moral virtue as an indicator of the highest individual excellence, which is philosophy or the exercise of theoretical virtue (EN 1176a30–1179a33). This standard in the end helps the virtuous individual to rise above any simple subjection to the dogmas of a given regime. But again, that which gives the individual some independence from the political community, subjects the individual to another, higher order, that of nature as it illuminates the good. The independence of Aristotle’s citizen from

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 87

Aristotle and Liberalism

87

the community depends upon insight into the order of the natural whole of which that human being is a part. Without habit, as inculcated by law and the polis, this highest subjection to excellence would be difficult if not impossible to achieve. Yet the individual human being does not stand apart from these influences or purposes as an individual. The particularity of the individual, which must be taken into account in order to determine moral action, has no standard of its own to raise against the competing purposes that bear on the circumstances, coming from the political community and the excellence of the class of human beings. The individual, in his unique particularity, is evaluated with reference to the benefit he brings to the political community and the extent to which he manifests the excellence associated with the class of human beings in general. Thus, properly understood, Aristotle gives no support to liberal individualism, for he cares about the particular individual only in order to subject it to its proper rulers, the city and man (understood in terms of human perfection). Perhaps Aristotle’s implicit critique of liberal individualism explains in part the strange character of his attack on slavery. For Aristotle obscures his own agreement with the critics of slavery in the twist and turn of his dialectical examination of the subject. The unique individual, according to Aristotle, has been subjected to necessity by nature. And there is no freedom to escape from this fact, assuming that it is rational to even conceive of such a liberation. The knowing individual, according to Aristotle, learns to exercise a limited freedom made possible by the necessities of this world, a freedom that is judged and determined by that necessary order. In this respect, we are in fact slaves of nature, but willing slaves, if we have understood it right.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT For Aristotle, the political community is defined by its regime. The regime is an authoritative arrangement of political offices aiming at a self-sufficient and complete way of life. A complete life includes as its most authoritative activity noble action, which is the work of political virtue. There is no true political community where the law concerns itself merely with contractual exchange, security of life and property, and alliance. There is no true regime where the law concerns itself only with avoiding injustice rather than with making the citizens good and just (P 1280a25–81a8). Yet liberalism is just such a political community. And the proper understanding of the liberal political community is that it has no true regime. The liberal political community is united in its hostility to regime politics, as described and championed by Aristotle. The liberal political community is animated by what

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

88

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 88

Eric S. Petrie

we will call a democratic anti-regime. This feature of liberalism’s self-limiting government can be seen in its critique of virtue. The distinctively liberal critique of virtue finds a contemporary restatement in the political theory of Judith Shklar. She saw the need to return to the origins of liberalism in order to recapture its essence. For this reason, she stands out among recent liberal theorists. The variety of liberalism that she promotes is “the liberalism of fear.” This doctrine of limited government guides itself by the light of a single public vice, namely injustice. Her version of liberal justice in turn aims at creating the conditions, both public and private, of freedom from fear. The avoidance of vice, not the promotion of virtue, gives her version of liberalism its moral goal. “One can be afraid of fear,” she says, “because fear is the ultimately evil moral condition.”16 Now the kind of fear that is most troublesome and most avoidable is that which citizens inflict on one another. Putting others into a state of fear, whether intended or accidental, is cruelty. The avoidance of fear, therefore, demands that we avoid cruelty above all else. Thus, the liberal citizen is guided by evils to be eliminated rather than goods to be secured. The institutions of government are to be limited, its power divided, its actions made impersonal, predictable, and rule-bound because government officials are the most capable of effecting cruelty on a large scale. In turn, the laws made by government guard society against this danger, for “justice itself is only a web of legal arrangements required to keep cruelty in check” (OV 237). According to Shklar, right thinking liberals will understand government not as a set of neutral procedures for right action but as a system of barriers to cruelty, our most pervasive and ordinary vice. Shklar reminds us of both liberalism’s orientation by virtue and its critique of virtue. The virtue of a liberal is the avoidance of ordinary vice. In their concern for virtue, liberals display a thorough suspicion of the longing for excellence. In the public domain, liberalism’s attention to human excellence is sober, skeptical, and disillusioned. Deeply affected by the experience of wars of religion over the salvation of souls, and wars of ideology over human perfection, liberals hope merely to establish the most ordinary security and freedom. Yet consideration of virtue is unavoidable. As Harvey Mansfield has argued, “any political scientist who does not merely endorse the claims of power is obliged to resort to virtue. Indeed, claims to power are always claims to the virtue necessary to exercise power well; so even those who are not serious about virtue—all actual parties—nonetheless submit to being judged before the bar of reason by the standards of virtue stated or implied in their own words.”17 To be sure, Shklar’s liberalism of fear still attends to the virtues and characters that are engendered in a liberal society. But the liberal attends to virtue not as a handmaid, intent on assisting him to perfection, but as a stern guardian and confessor, even as a warden. Matters of

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 89

Aristotle and Liberalism

89

virtue define the liberal political creed, but negatively. All our virtues are in fact, “avoidance of vices,” says Shklar, speaking for the liberal Kant (OV 239). From this perspective, “moral fortitude,” a kind of courage, and a kind of heroism, can be said to be the core of liberal virtue because it is necessary to “combat our evil impulses” (OV 234). We might then define liberalism, as Shklar defines it, as a doctrine of politics that limits political action to the promotion of negative virtue. For Shklar, the good character that liberalism prefers is “self-made,” and so it would be contradictory to authorize coercive force to interfere with the process of forming good character (OV 234). Thus liberals aim at a good character that they cannot directly form. This is not to say that liberals give up on virtue in public life, however, or rely on “crass self-interest” as the only acceptable public motives. In Shklar’s account of liberalism, it just so happens that the proper “setting and conditions” are best created by restricting government from forming dispositions and ordering motives (OV 235). Virtue is promoted best by a restriction on its active promotion. Shklar’s liberalism of fear beautifully expresses the negative character of liberalism’s doctrine of virtue: liberal virtue is the avoidance of ordinary vices. Now if “regime” (politeia) means anything to Aristotle, it signifies the direct and open rule of a single class and way of life, without apology for making a particular set of virtues authoritative for the entire political community, and without guilt about promoting a single way of life and the expression of that life in the form of a hierarchy of virtues. Even more, Aristotle’s Greek polis is peopled by a small, culturally and racially homogenous group. Liberalism, on the contrary, is defined by its bad conscience about promoting a single authoritative way of life. And liberal democracies can rely on little common culture. Rather, one finds there more of an overlapping creed or a loose alliance of different traditions than a homogenous culture.18 To this extent, liberal democracy seems to stand outside the Aristotelian framework of a single or mixed regime with its dominant way of life. To state the matter most sharply, liberal politics explicitly opposes the classical regime with its acceptance of a homogenous culture and open promotion of a single complex of virtues. For this reason, I call it a liberal “antiregime,” for it resists the regime character of its own non-neutral promotion of liberal virtue, limiting the power of government especially to the security of those minimal conditions of civil living together that Aristotle said falls short of a true regime. Liberals who claim to be neutral with respect to matters of virtue mean either that they believe politics should be indifferent to the state of human excellence (concerned only with power, let us say, or economic well-being, leaving “the values question” to free individuals in a non-coercive society) or that liberal freedom promotes all ways of life equally and does not prefer one cluster of lives and virtues over another. Either view misjudges the

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

90

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 90

Eric S. Petrie

relationship of politics and morality. Liberal neutrality fails to see the regime-character of all political communities, including the liberal community. A political order establishes itself and expresses itself in an account of justice; and justice is one of the chief virtues (if not the chief virtue) that defines character. It is then inevitable that a political order operates as a regime, establishing a hierarchy of virtues that it promulgates with the authority of law and right. Shklar acknowledges the regime-character of liberal democracy. The liberal character exists and it has distinctive tendencies, a hierarchy of vices to avoid, and peculiar moral complexities to understand. Ordinary Vices was written to articulate this rank order of liberal vices and to identify the perplexities of our moral world. Shklar admits the necessary overlap between politics and virtue, and thus displays the odd character of the liberal promotion of virtue. Liberal limited government, conceived in opposition to the classical regime, is an anti-regime. The liberal anti-regime does not confidently assert its creed using coercive power to require the private expression of liberal beliefs. Liberal public authority makes a public show of restraint with respect to opinions and beliefs about matters of virtue. Without being indifferent to matters of virtue and belief, the liberal authority refuses to use force to punish the expression of illiberal opinion. The liberal tolerates even the public expression of illiberal belief. Toleration is itself the first virtue of liberals in their relations with one another. In this way one can see how the liberal anti-regime defines itself by its opposition to the traditional regime’s confident self-promotion. The anti-regime character of the liberal political community determines its indirect treatment of opinion. Coercive authority, by its example and by force, establishes a free society in which all members refrain from forcing any belief. The liberal authority establishes no regime. But it is not indifferent to the opinions of its citizens. The liberal regime does not fail to offer a full account of the justice it sanctions. It expects that liberal opinions, of whatever sort, will predominate within the society and it abominates those illiberal opinions that manifest in criminal actions. My neighbor’s beliefs about God do not pick my pocket, one may be assured, but the belief in a thieving God that justifies a crime wave will be denounced by right-thinking liberal citizens. This condemnation is sure to be echoed by the liberal judge who pronounces the criminal’s sentence. Thus one can understand the peculiar attitude of liberal democracy toward its own virtues, which it promotes only indirectly, under the cover of its more fundamental promotion of liberation from moral constraint. In this crucial respect, the liberal anti-regime is a form of limited government unknown to the ancient world. And while Aristotle’s doctrine of the regime illuminates fundamentally the character of the modern experiment, the liberal regime must be under-

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 91

Aristotle and Liberalism

91

stood, in Aristotle’s terms, as essentially opposed to the very idea of a regime. To summarize, one who sees himself as the citizen of a regime understands himself as a member of a homogenous culture and a political community that rightly promotes and enforces a harmonious complex of virtues and beliefs. This “regime-soul” is communal; the anti-regime liberal is first of all an individual. The classical citizen trusted the regime to supply a moral center, whereas the liberal citizen tends toward suspicion of political interference and skepticism of communal traditions. In the end, however, one must recognize that the liberal form of rule is nonetheless a variety of regime. The liberal form of rule, like all forms of rule, rules. And in ruling, the liberal regime cannot help but shape the character of citizens in ways that reflect its own character. Like the liberal citizen, the liberal regime is self-conscious and self-critical of its character. One might say that the liberal regime has a bad conscience about its essential nature. We have called the liberal form of rule an “anti-regime” not primarily because it is something other than a regime but because it is a regime opposed to itself. Aristotle’s—and only Aristotle’s—political science can supply liberals with an understanding of their form of government in this respect.

LIBERALISM AS LIBERATION FROM CLASSICAL VIRTUE We define liberalism primarily with regard to the purpose of its form of rule: the liberty of the citizen. This liberty can be variously conceived but all accounts of liberty will share a central concept most clearly stated by Montesquieu, namely that liberty for the citizen in a liberal democracy is the freedom to live with a minimum of the constraints associated with political virtue. The central appeal of life under liberalism is the liberation of the individual from the demands of civic virtue (to the extent possible under the rule of law in a secure commonwealth). This formulation of the essence of liberalism has the advantage of capturing the common thread tying together the diversity of lives within a liberal society. It identifies the main appeal of the life made possible by the liberal “regime”; it focuses on the central phenomenon of a political order, the way of life fostered and enhanced by the regime; and finally, it singles out that trait of the new doctrine most at odds with the classics and its chief representative, Aristotle. This liberty is the freedom of an individual, as we have argued, for to liberate persons from the constraints of civic virtue means to free them from the necessity of acting as dutiful members of social groups—familial, communal, and even national (to the extent compatible with securing the conditions of freedom). The common saying that my freedom extends only as far as the equal freedom of another does not capture the essence of the liberal

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

92

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 92

Eric S. Petrie

way of life, for it piously attends to the limits of freedom, the obligation to respect the liberty of another. Yet the essence of liberal freedom is not this respect so much as the liberation involved in establishing a range within which I can be free from moral obligation to others. Of course, one may choose to be morally obligated. Indeed, free society under liberal conditions exhorts citizens to a virtue beyond its minimal requirements. But the fact remains that the assumption of such a burden is the free decision of the individual, and society may not coerce such a choice. Liberalism is liberation from virtue. Montesquieu expressed this insight as clearly as any liberal thinker. Speaking of the new form of politics and society that had developed in England, Montesquieu emphasizes that the purpose of government in England is to secure the liberty of the individual.19 And in explaining what this liberty means, Montesquieu announces the liberal insight with the voice of one crying to the classics: “Who would think it! Even virtue has need of limits” (SL XI.4.155). Virtue needs limits, and the limits placed on virtue liberate the individual from moral coercion practiced by the political community. The liberated individuals of England enjoy security from violence and unlawful force, but they also can be secure in the knowledge that moral failing, as defined by civic enthusiasts, will only be punished as befits the crime—failure of manners by social ostracism, failure of sexual mores by the same, failure of religious devotion by freedom from religious communal obligations (SL XII.1–14). As a consequence, the English citizen is portrayed by Montesquieu as a little king within his legally protected realm, moving as if by whim from atheist to convert and back again (SL XIX.27.332). Such an individual has been liberated from the strict demands of high manners (the old principle of honor and its duels), as well as from the strict demands of high morals essential to ancient republics. This citizen has been freed from the demand that he sacrifice his dearest pleasures for the sake of political virtue, a monkish thing necessary for the survival of the old republics that educated citizens to be “athletes and fighters,” denying them all pleasures but love of the law itself (SL V.2.43). We do well to define virtue as political virtue in the sense used by Montesquieu. Political virtue first means self-sacrificing devotion to the common good of the political community of which one is a member. And while liberalism, as we define it, means liberation from the unnecessary constraints of virtue, it does not mean total liberation. As Montesquieu himself was obliged to clarify in the forward to his work, “in every country of the world morality is desired” (SL XLI). But there is a great difference between ancient republics and monarchies, on the one hand, which encourage the extremes of moral duty and honorable self-sacrifice, and a liberal constitutional society such as England, on the other hand, which releases individu-

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 93

Aristotle and Liberalism

93

als from all but the most necessary duties. Thus, the essence of liberalism resides in the concept of liberty understood as liberation from classical virtue. We find ourselves unable to combine in a meaningful way the teaching of Aristotle with that of modern liberalism. The problem is a consequence of the essential difference in the cosmological outlook between ancient and modern. There can be no genuine Aristotelian liberalism because liberal thought is in conception anti-Aristotelian, and there can be no revival of classical political philosophy under modern conditions because, as a body of political thought and action, its basis in a human community has been lost. Any adaptation of Aristotle’s thought to modern conditions only distorts it so that it takes on the cast of the contemporary world. Any true revival of the thought of Aristotle is possible only for individuals, if for anyone; and it serves understanding, not action. Aristotelian liberalism is a phrase that expresses the attempt to recover that thought in the mind of a modern liberal—but however much we might wish for it, such a doctrine cannot exist. For the two elements from which such a concoction would be produced are fundamentally opposed.

NOTES 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 116. 2. Thanks to Steve Kautz, Sharon Krause, Mary Ann McGrail, and M. Richard Zinman for helpful comments on this paper. 3. See Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the lost “original Greek understanding of politics” in The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 22–37. The fundamentally modern character of her philosophy is most clearly revealed in an early essay, “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” Partisan Review 13 (Winter 1946): 34. 4. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 67. 5. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 76–77. 6. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., “The Absent Executive in Aristotle’s Politics” in Natural Right and Political Right, ed. Peter W. Schramm (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984), 169. 7. Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989), 70. 8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 91. Hereafter, references to Leviathan will appear parenthetically in the text (with chapter and page number) preceded by the letter “L.” 9. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Second Treatise, section 7, page 271; section 34, page 291. Hereafter, references to the Second Treatise will appear in the text (with section and page number) preceded by the letters “ST.”

08_540_05_Ch04.qxd

94

11/19/08

5:36 AM

Page 94

Eric S. Petrie

10. Aristotle, Politica, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1252a26–31. Hereafter, references to Politica will appear in the text preceded by the letter “P.” Translations from the Greek are by Carnes Lord, The Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 11. David Bolotin, An Approach to Aristotle’s Physics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 150. 12. Bolotin, An Approach to Aristotle’s Physics, 151, 152. 13. For Hobbes, a slave is a captive, held by force at the pleasure of the captor. Such slaves “have no obligation at all; but may break their bonds, or the prison; and kill or carry away captive their master, justly” (L 20.141). Similarly, for Locke, a slave is one put by force under absolute power. This establishes a state of war between the two. “To be free of such a force is the only security of my preservation,” argues Locke, and slavery “is nothing else but the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror, and a captive” (ST 17.279; 24.284). 14. Consider Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See especially the discussion of the self “as centerless, as historical contingency all the way through,” as a “centerless web of historically conditioned beliefs and desires,” who then strives for “private autonomy” through artistic self-creation, 175–96. 15. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894), 1103a18–20, 23–26. Hereafter, references to Ethica Nicomachea will appear in the text preceded by the letters “EN.” Translations from the Greek are by H. Rackham, The Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), with changes for literalness. 16. Judith N. Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 242, 244. Hereafter references to Ordinary Vices will appear parenthetically in the text preceded by the letters “OV.” 17. Harvey Mansfield, “Executive Power and the Passion for Virtue,” Studies in American Political Development, 6 (Spring 1992): 217–21. 18. Consider John Rawls’s discussion of the overlapping consensus in his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 133–72. 19. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Book 11, chapters 5 and 6. Hereafter, references to The Spirit of the Laws will appear parenthetically in the text (with book, chapter, and page number) preceded by the letters “SL.”

5 Against Power and Glory Montaigne’s Critique of Machiavellian Acquisition Alan Levine

Most people seek to acquire what they desire, whether it be wealth, power, or glory. The distinguished political theorist Harvey C. Mansfield has shown that the first philosopher to legitimate this view of acquisition was Machiavelli, who asserted that “it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed.”1 Through his scholarship and translations, Mansfield has demonstrated how Machiavelli inaugurates this modern view of acquisition, and why Machiavelli thought the previous criticisms of acquisition were naïve. Mansfield has also shown how Machiavelli’s emphasis on the acquisition of power and glory was later tamed and transformed into the pursuit of material goods.2 While Machiavelli’s positive view of acquisition has inspired many of the main movements of modern thought and is widely (and sometimes wildly) promoted in the Western world today, it is denounced by the sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). Montaigne judges that a life dedicated to the acquisition of things outside oneself is largely wasted. Like the worldly modern thinkers who praise acquisition, such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, and Hume, Montaigne bases his arguments on the good in this world, not on the hereafter. Like these thinkers, Montaigne appeals to worldly self-interest. But Montaigne’s conception of self-interest is very different from these other thinkers’ conceptions. Indeed, it runs against the modern grain and from it he draws different conclusions on how to live one’s life. Given the spiritual malaise that has accompanied the modern disenchantment of the world, Montaigne’s vision is one worth trying to recapture. 95

96

Alan Levine

While a fruitful conversation could be created between Montaigne and all the above mentioned thinkers, this paper analyzes Montaigne’s criticisms of Machiavellian acquisition. To avoid misunderstanding, however, it is helpful to first sketch out what Montaigne’s critique is not. Montaigne’s critique of Machiavellian acquisition is not naïve or moralistic. Montaigne, like Machiavelli, was intensely critical of the Christian politics of his time,3 and he dismisses “imaginary, artificial descriptions of government,” as he rejects all utopian schemes.4 He accepts a Machiavellian real politique view of the necessities of human affairs,5 and he does so in part because he lived through a horrific civil war and, like Machiavelli, was involved in politics at the highest levels.6 In short, Montaigne knew well the ways of the world. His differences with Machiavelli are not primarily moral. Montaigne’s differences with Machiavelli are over the human good. Although Montaigne excelled in politics, he thought the good life was a private one. Machiavelli equates the greatest good with the glory acquired by instituting new modes and orders. Machiavelli does not systematically argue that this is the human good, but his writing insinuates and suggests— and he wants his readers to assume—that power and glory are worth the trouble of attaining them.7 In contrast, Montaigne presents what he deems to be a fuller picture of acquisition, focusing especially on its costs. For Montaigne, the greatest human good is to explore (and, to the extent possible, to know) oneself.8 He deems self-exploration as the source of tranquility of soul and happiness. “The greatest thing in the world,” Montaigne writes, is not power and glory, as Machiavelli intimates, but “to know how to belong to oneself” (I.39, 236 [178]). He tells us that the “counsel of true and natural philosophy” is “to be content with yourself, to borrow nothing except from yourself” (I.39, 242 [183]). While Machiavelli also speaks of self-reliance, he would have his readers rely on their own arms to conquer the world. In contrast, Montaigne writes that “True freedom” does not come via power over peoples, land, and states, it “is to have power over oneself for everything” (III.12, 1022 [800]). He thus approvingly quotes Seneca, saying, “He is most powerful who has power over himself” (III.12, 1022 [800]). Montaigne highlights what Machiavelli does not: the acquisition and maintenance of political power and glory, as opposed to seeking selfknowledge, necessarily involve paying the greatest price, including, and especially, the effective loss of oneself. The difference between Montaigne’s and Machiavelli’s conceptions of the human good is stark. Montaigne signals the difference between those who live “at home” in themselves and those who aim to acquire external power and glory by distinguishing the different directions their movements take. The former go inward or in any case always come back to themselves, even if by a circular or circuitous route; the latter take straight lines away from themselves. The difference between the two groups is clear in the following quotation: “The

Against Power and Glory

97

world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him; as for me, I look inside of me; I have no business but with myself” (II.17, 641 [499]). Thus Montaigne tells us that his own mind’s “principal and most laborious study is studying itself” (III.3, 797 [621]), and that “my professed principle . . . is to be wholly contained and established within myself” (III.2, 793 [618]). The corollary of this is that Montaigne thinks “The worst condition of man is when he loses knowledge and control of himself” (II.2, 322 [245]), which is exactly what he thinks happens when people live outside themselves in the pursuit of illusions such as glory and power. This paper explains Montaigne’s criticisms of the Machiavellian acquisition of power and glory. The first two sections analyze Montaigne’s ideas on why the acquisition of power and glory are incompatible with the greatest goods. The paper then elaborates on Montaigne’s conception of the self because it is his conception of the self that underlies his criticisms of Machiavellian acquistion and that grounds his alternative recommendation of how to live. Instead of acquiring power, glory, or any other thing external to themselves, people should go “home.”

POWER Although Montaigne’s most systematic critique of political power, “Of the Disadvantage of Greatness” (III.7), begins with a jest of envy—“Since we cannot attain it, let us take our revenge by speaking ill of it” (III.7, 894 [699])—Montaigne’s criticisms of “greatness” amount to a deadly serious indictment of political ambition. Self-interest properly understood, according to Montaigne, steers one away from acquiring or possessing power. Machiavelli and Montaigne both distinguish between ordinary people who want to be left alone and the ambitious or great who want to command, and both agree that the problems of acquiring and maintaining power really only concern the ambitious. Whereas the ordinary accept their situations relatively uncritically, Montaigne writes that the ambitious are “eager to get out from under command, under some pretext, and to usurp mastery” (I.17, 73 [51]). Although Montaigne, like Machiavelli, sometimes characterizes all human beings as ambitious, asserting that “each man” has some degree of it within himself (I.17, 73 [51]), he, also like Machiavelli, focuses his analysis on the unruly few, such as the religious innovators of his own time who try to acquire power on a major scale (II.12, 420 [323]). In either case, he clearly dislikes how ambition manifests itself in politics, saying that “I have a distaste for mastery, both active and passive” (III.7, 896 [700]). Montaigne argues that ambitious people will be harmed by acquiring power. Here we must distinguish between two possible outcomes in the

98

Alan Levine

successful pursuit of power. Some achieve much power but not the highest position in a state, whereas others attain the highest power and become the sole ultimate authority. Montaigne addresses each of these cases separately. The former position is what I shall call the Remirro de Orco position, after Cesar Borgia’s henchman who, Machiavelli famously explains, brutally pacified Romagna. Remirro did such a good job that he quickly “reduced it to peace and unity, with the very greatest reputation for himself.”9 After doing his job, Borgia had Remirro murdered and left in a plaza in two pieces. This is the famous spectacle that Machiavelli says left the people “at once satisfied and stupefied.”10 Both Montaigne and Machiavelli would agree that Remirro’s end is practically inevitable. His success revealed him to be a potential threat to Borgia. Insofar as he proved to be talented, either he or Borgia had to be eliminated. Both could not thrive. Machiavelli teaches his readers to be wary of putting themselves in Remirro’s position. A successful captain, he writes, should always anticipate this reaction from his prince and thus must do one of two things. He must either immediately resign his position, avoid insolence, and throw himself on the mercy of his boss (a path that could succeed but that is psychologically difficult for a successful captain and that is inadvisable since its success depends totally on the whim of the prince), or he must overthrow his boss and make himself prince. Machiavelli cautions, “There are no other ways.”11 And for those engaged in politics, Montaigne agrees.12 The acquisition of less than absolute power has serious and necessary risks. If you do a poor job, the boss will eliminate you as useless. However, if you do what the boss wants in an efficient manner, rather than be rewarded for your heinous deed, you have proven yourself to be talented and thus a potential threat that needs to be eliminated. The lesson is that the position of henchman is a thankless one. Montaigne does not discuss Remirro specifically, but he analyzes his exact predicament in a chapter entitled “Of the Useful and the Honorable” (III.1). The necessities of politics, Montaigne acknowledges, demand that someone must do dirty work.13 Montaigne rejects visions of totally clean politics as utopian and unreal imaginings. The political ruler has to have a never-ending supply of ambitious people who, in the pursuit of power, will willingly be his pawns. However, unlike Machiavelli, Montaigne asks his reader why he or she should assume the dirty job. Someone must do it—and Montaigne sees from experience that there are always “enough who will” (III.1, 774 [604])—but why you? Montaigne pithily summarizes the difficulty of the ambitious who serve the more powerful as follows: “As much as public affairs are bettered by your deed, so much your own are worsened; the better you do, the worse you do. And it will be nothing new, nor perhaps will it be without some air of justice, if the same man punishes you for it who put you to work” (III.1, 775 [605]). Unlike Machiavelli who addresses only the most

Against Power and Glory

99

virtuous, Montaigne also looks at the world from the point of view of the moderately shrewd. All his advice to them is encapsulated in the phrase, “the better you do, the worse you do.” Montaigne points out that on a strictly Machiavellian calculus, these people would be better off avoiding politics altogether. The pursuit of power is a dead-end job—except for the extraordinary prince who manages to attain it all. Even if an ambitious person attains all the power in a state and becomes the sole authority, Montaigne argues that he will not have what he seeks. Montaigne acknowledges that power has some real benefits. Political participation can be a noble thing according to the Montaigne who speaks of “the finest science there is, namely, the science of obeying and commanding” (I.25, 143 [105]), but this type of equal citizenship is not what is desired by the politically ambitious. Montaigne also recognizes that there is a certain inherent pleasure in ruling. “There is a certain satisfaction in being in command,” he says, “were it only of a barn, and in being obeyed by one’s people,” but he does not think much of this, deeming it “too monotonous and languid a pleasure” (III.9, 925 [723]). If power has any benefit it is because of its uses, and Montaigne concedes that it can ease one’s tasks in life, supply means to satisfy one’s desires, and offer a certain amount of freedom.14 But here, according to Montaigne, the benefits of power end. Montaigne argues that the costs of power vastly outweigh its benefits. He argues that far from benefiting oneself, ruling leads to a loss of self in various ways. First, the weight of responsibility tends to weigh down morally serious or reflective individuals. Machiavelli might not address such readers, but Montaigne does. Montaigne argues, “The toughest and most difficult occupation in the world, in my opinion, is to play the part of a king worthily. I excuse more of their faults than people commonly do, in consideration of the dreadful weight of their burden, which dazes me” (III.7, 896 [700]). Against what Machiavelli implies, Montaigne argues that power aggravates, instead of lessens, one’s burdens. Deciding questions of war and peace, acquiring and maintaining power, life, and death, is weighty, indeed, and Montaigne thinks it must necessarily weigh down a reflective individual. It thus hinders the search for inner tranquility and the process of selfexploration. Second, because of the tremendous security risks that go along with power, ruling exacerbates the risks of the physical loss of self. This jibes with the first reason insofar as the attendant anxiety over one’s safety cannot help but mar one’s inner tranquility. Finally, such a high position makes one dependent on one’s subordinates for everything from one’s physical security to advice to the execution of one’s policies. Thus, the idea of absolute power is a misnomer. A ruler “owes his very self to others” (III.6, 881 [689]), which is both a cause for alarm from a Machiavellian point of view and the exact opposite of the carefully cultivated self-rule Montaigne advocates.15

100

Alan Levine

To rule a polity well—and this is the real problem—one has to sacrifice everything else, including the cultivation of oneself. Power not only fails to bring tranquility and happiness, but seeking to acquire it both delays and prevents the attainment of these goods. To illustrate this, Montaigne tells a story about King Pyrrhus, who when asked while on a campaign in Italy what he would do after conquering the land, replied that he would then conquer Gaul and Spain and Africa. And, Montaigne writes, when his “wise counselor, wanting to make him feel the vanity of his ambition,” asked what he would do after having subdued the whole world, he replied, “I shall rest and live content and at my ease.” To this the counselor retorts, “In God’s name Sire, tell me what keeps you from being in that condition right now, if that is what you want. Why don’t you settle down at this very moment in the state you say you aspire to, and spare yourself all the intervening toil and risks?” What, other than his own choices, was preventing the king from enjoying this repose on that very day, or before he set out on his campaign? Montaigne answers these questions with a quotation from Lucretius: “Because he does not know the bounds of gain/And where true pleasure stops, and starts to wane” (I.42, 259 [196]). If happiness were the activity of conquest itself, the pursuit of power and Pyrrhus’ actions would be sensible. But Machiavelli never recommends suffering the privations of battle for their own sake. Fighting for him, as for Montaigne and most people, is a means to an end. Montaigne’s argument is that the means of acquiring and possessing power necessarily contradict the attainment of the greatest end. Power is a means to an end, and presumably to the best ends. Montaigne (as will be further explained) argues that the best human good is a private life of selfexploration. But to acquire and keep power, one must forego the systematic cultivation of this good, because power requires one to be on guard and scheming continuously. To protect oneself from the Cesare Borgia, one must keep constant vigilance and ahead of everyone else. Machiavelli calls people who can do this virtuous, and Montaigne admires their political skills, too. But Montaigne further notes that imagining from where every threat may come is a full-time job that leaves one little time for self-cultivation. Montaigne cites additional reasons why power gets in the way of happiness, noting how power attracts an annoying crowd of flatterers who get in one’s way wherever one turns and explaining how even in the strongest kingdom in the world, power can do little to alleviate life’s inevitable annoyances. For example, not even absolute power can cure a fever or a migraine or help one deal with jealousy, old age, or death.16 Self-exploration, Montaigne argues, better helps one deal with life’s negatives. Montaigne’s point is that the end for which wise people should fight— space to cultivate themselves—can typically be had much more easily than via conquest. And certainly for Montaigne, who thinks the greatest goods

Against Power and Glory

101

are tranquility of mind (as Pyrrhus also seems to claim to believe) and selfexploration, the exercise of power leads one out into the world and away from oneself and thus away from the greatest goods. It is for this reason that Montaigne concludes that “the advantages of princes are quasi-imaginary advantages” and that “all the real advantages that princes have are shared by men of moderate fortune” (I.42, 257 [194] and 258 [195], emphasis added). According to Montaigne, moderate fortune gives one sufficient time and space to cultivate oneself. Machiavelli might object that wealth and security depend on a stable political context, so to truly secure their advantages one must rule. Montaigne does not entirely disagree, as his own political involvements attest. But Montaigne makes a different prudential calculation than Machiavelli. While it is true that not having power leaves one free to pursue the private good but vulnerable to the powers that be, Montaigne effectively argues that it is better to secure public peace by doing what is minimally necessary than to try to maximally protect oneself by seizing power. The latter course guarantees maximal security but at the price of leaving one no time to cultivate the true private good. Machiavelli’s maximal solution, paradoxically, utterly backfires in achieving the highest human end. Machiavelli’s recommendations only make sense with a radically different conception of the good than Montaigne sees (and we shall examine this more fully in the next section). Montaigne’s own “minimal” solution to achieving the political stability requisite for self-exploration rejects assuming the crippling burdens of ruling. Instead, he tries to persuade the rulers that it is in their interests to create a private sphere in which they should tolerate the divergent views of individuals. Montaigne’s main aim is, of course, to secure a space in which individuals can pursue the private good of self-exploration, but he shrewdly argues that a private sphere of free conscience makes the populace less likely to revolt from the state authority for two complementary reasons, both of which ring true in the American political experience. “It may be said, on the one hand,” Montaigne writes, “that to give factions a loose reign to entertain their own opinions is to scatter and sow division; it is almost lending a hand to augment it, there being no barrier or coercion of the laws to check or hinder its course” (II.19, 654 [509]). “Complete freedom,” “freedom of conscience,” he argues, leads to a multiplicity of sects that divide the population into factions, making an organized revolt from below more difficult. To some extent, but with a different focus, this anticipates Federalist #10. It may be objected, as it was at the time, that such factions would turn violent and lead to civil disorder, but Montaigne is not worried. Making an argument that anticipates Tocqueville’s description of the effects of freedom of religion in America, Montaigne asserts “that to give factions a loose reign to entertain their own opinions is to soften and relax them through facility and ease, and to dull the point, which is sharpened by rarity,

102

Alan Levine

novelty, and difficulty” (II.19, 654 [509]). Toleration mitigates the causes of animosity at the same time that it controls its effects. Thus, Montaigne is not indifferent to the need for political stability or the demands of rulers. Montaigne’s wisdom is to get others to take care of these political needs while leaving himself and other reflective individuals free to privately pursue the greatest goods to the maximal extent possible. As the greatest individual goods, self-exploration and inner tranquility, are necessarily denied to an all-powerful ruler, so, Montaigne argues, are the two greatest social goods: true friendship and true discussion. True friendship and true discussion are the social manifestations of the quest for selfexploration and self-knowledge. These beautiful bonds are incompatible with ruling both because of the nature of ruling and because of the nature of true friendship and discussion. Whereas Montaigne explains how friendship and discussion are based on a deep sharing and reciprocity, Machiavelli explains how virtuous ruling must necessarily be done alone. These activities thus have fundamentally contradictory imperatives. Montaigne also articulates another reason for this incompatibility, arguing that true friendship and discussion can only exist when individuals are “at home.” Self-exploration and self-knowledge are necessary to regulate oneself, and, without them, human beings would run amuck. “If their actions went astray,” Montaigne says, “they were by my measure neither friends to each other, nor friends to themselves” (I.28, 188 [140]). Friendship and discussion are thus denied to rulers (as well as everyone else) who are not “at home.”17 For Montaigne, the beautiful bond of friendship is more rewarding and more satisfying than ruling. More than any other modern writer, Montaigne values, and powerfully portrays so the reader will also value, true friendship. Montaigne describes it as extremely rare, extremely desirable, and based on a profound sharing and intermingling, saying, “our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them and cannot find it again. If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I” (I.28, 187 [139]). This “complete fusion of . . . wills,” a “truly perfect” union, is a “relationship being that of one soul in two bodies” (I.28, 189 [141]). He describes it as so intimate that friends can neither lend nor give anything to each other, because everything of each properly belongs to the other already (I.28, 189 [141]). He describes friendship as two people being “fused into one” and as an “insatiable hunger for bodily presence” (III.9, 955 [747]). The perfect and intense nature of this relationship “dissolves all other obligations” (I.28, 190 [142]). What Montaigne says of one pair of friends is true of all: “They were friends more than citizens, friends more than friends or enemies of their country or friends of ambition and disturbance” (I.28, 188 [140]).18 In contrast to the unquestioned sharing

Against Power and Glory

103

and reciprocity entailed in friendship, Machiavelli argues that the most virtuous rule must be a solo affair because power sharing must inevitably devolve into rivalry or imprudent compromise. According to him, a virtuous ruler cannot afford to be held back by the less shrewd and thus must be prepared to eliminate anyone at any time. (If your friend were shrewder, he would do away with you.) If Machiavelli is correct, if a ruler had a true friend he would not be able to keep his kingdom long. The bond and requirements of Montaigne’s friendship are thus surely incompatible with Machiavelli’s vision of virtuous rule. Thus in the truest sense, rulers are necessarily friendless. Given the choice between a kingdom or a true friend, Machiavelli would have you choose power and Montaigne would consider that tragically unwise. Just as rulers are deprived of true friends, so too are they deprived of true discussion. While friendship is the unique bond between two virtuous and reflective people, true discussion is more generally available and described by Montaigne as the greatest good of social interaction. “The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion,” he writes, “is discussion. I find it sweeter than any other action of our life” (III.8, 900 [704]). Discussion affords the opportunity to test oneself, but instead of being merely an internal dialogue, it is an essaying of oneself through others. Montaigne does not deem any and every exchange of words to be discussion. Flattery or sycophantic speech do not provide a true test of reality or any real resistance. They do nothing but uncritically reinforce one’s existing opinions and thus provide no benefit at all. True discussion requires that one’s interlocutors be strong, independent, and courageous in speaking the truth as they see it. Montaigne seeks his verbal sparring partners from among “those who are called talented gentlemen [honnestes et habiles hommes] . . . the rarest type among us, and a type that is chiefly due to nature” (III.3, 802 [625]).19 He describes real discussion as both playful and serious. On the one hand, he emphasizes its cheerful qualities, which include good spirits, “joking wittily,” and “an exercise” for his “natural gaiety.”20 And in this vein, he emphasizes that the point of such noble discussions is solely the process itself. “The object of this association,” he says, “is simply intimacy, fellowship, and conversation: exercise of minds, without any other fruit” (III.3, 802 [625]). But on the other hand, he suggests that not any frivolous topic of conversation will do. They must be serious, as “in quest of that which is” (III.8, 904 [706]), “for the needs of life” (III.8, 904 [707]), and pursuing “the cause of truth” (III.8, 902 [705]). If no definitive truth is reached, discussions are not a waste of time, both because there is pleasure in the chase and because the intimacy achieved in such intense striving is beautiful and moving in itself. According to Montaigne, discussion can also serve as an outlet for the natural aggression in mankind, and he wants to replace the physical warfare

104

Alan Levine

of princes with this superior kind of mental jousting. Thus, when Montaigne describes his ideal of conversation, he often uses military analogies: “If I discuss with a strong mind and a stiff jouster, he presses on my flanks, prods me right and left” (III.8, 900 [704]). He also compares his ideal of discussion to fencing (III.8, 905 [707]), sword fighting (III.8, 914 [715]), altercations (III.9, 934 [730]), and a military campaign (III.8, 917–18 [717]). Moreover, discussion requires contestation. “I like a strong, manly fellowship and familiarity,” he says, “a friendship that delights in the sharpness and vigor of its intercourse, as does love in bites and scratches that draw blood. It is not vigorous and generous enough if it is not quarrelsome . . . if it fears knocks and moves with constraint” (III.8, 902 [705]). Like war, such noble discussions push people beyond their ordinary limits and ideas: “his ideas launch mine. Rivalry, glory, competition, push me and lift me above myself” (III.8, 900 [704]). But unlike in war, one’s success in discussion is compatible with one’s jouster’s in the sense that both can be stimulated and learn. Montaigne’s aim in discussion thus sounds very un-Machiavellian. It is not to win an argument by any means but actually to improve himself. “I feel much prouder of the victory I win over myself,” he insists, “when, in the very heat of battle, I make myself bow beneath the force of my adversary’s reason, than I feel gratified by the victory I win over him through his weakness” (III.8, 903 [706]). The qualities tested in philosophical sparring and the potential growth it entails are also more integral to human beings than those found in physical sparring. This kind of redirection of energy represents, for Montaigne, the wisdom and maturation of man.21 Discussion leads to intimacy—with oneself and others—and to self-improvement and, according to Montaigne, rulers are fundamentally denied the pleasures and benefits of such intellectual exchanges. Because the demands of ruling necessarily keep them occupied with external matters and concerns, rulers have little time to spend cultivating discussions. Moreover, people generally humor, flatter, and just follow all-powerful rulers. They dare not risk offending power, so they tell it whatever they think it wants to hear and allow kings to triumph in every trifle. It is because of this that Montaigne relates a philosopher’s jest that kings learn only how to ride horses, because, while human beings continually defer to a prince, a horse will just as soon throw the son of a king as the son of a footman.22 Montaigne concludes, It is a pity to have so much power that everything gives way to you. Your fortune repels society and companionship too far from you; it plants you too far apart. That ease and slack facility of making everything bow beneath you is the enemy of every kind of pleasure. That is sliding, not walking; sleeping, not living. Imagine man accompanied by omnipotence: he is sunk; he must ask you

Against Power and Glory

105

for hindrance and resistance, as an alms; his being and his welfare are in indigence. (III.7, 897-98 [701–2])

While Machiavelli might not think omnipotence is fully possible, it is the effectual aim of a virtuous prince. This emphasizes Montaigne’s point that the very power and heights of ruling place the ruler “outside of human association: there is too much disparity and disproportion” (I.42, 258 [195]). Montaigne summarizes the plight of the ruler by saying, “There is perhaps nothing more pleasant in association with men than the trials [essais] of strength we have with one another, in rivalry of honor and worth, whether in exercises of the body or of the mind; and in these sovereigns have no real share” (III.7, 896–97 [701]). Or to put it perhaps more precisely, rulers engage in only one essaying contest, namely the struggle for power that they wage against their own subjects and against other sovereigns. But this struggle for power consumes their all. It leaves them no time to essay or cultivate themselves in more integral and valuable ways. “Their royal status stifles and consumes their other real and essential qualities,” he says, “these are sunk in royalty. . . . It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such” (III.7, 898 [702]). In conclusion, the price of ruling is the loss of oneself. According to Montaigne, power brings one only moderate advantages but costs one any opportunity for the greatest individual and social goods. Ruling is effectively incompatible with self-exploration, and because neither friendship nor true discussion can form “where there is so little relation and correspondence,” an absolute ruler is necessarily “deprived of all mutual friendship and society, wherein consists the sweetest and most perfect fruit of human life” (I.42, 258 [195]). Machiavelli emphasizes that virtuous rule is necessarily a solo operation, but he does not dwell on the human costs to the extraordinary prince. In contrast, to dampen the allure of acquiring power, Montaigne explains how it deprives one of the most meaningful human actions and interactions.

GLORY Glory, the elusive charm for which men risk so much, is condemned by Montaigne as he condemns power: it is a limited good for which men often foolishly sacrifice better ones. However, like Machiavelli, Montaigne knows that it is glory, not power or wealth, that the ambitious primarily seek. If King Pyrrhus had answered his counselor truthfully, it is likely that he would have confessed this as his true motive. Montaigne sees the quest for glory as an omnipresent and powerful force in human affairs. “Of all the illusions in the world,” he says, “the most universally received is the concern

106

Alan Levine

for reputation and glory” (I.41, 248 [187]). It has “such live roots in us that I do not know whether anyone yet has ever been able to get clean rid of it. . . . For as Cicero says, even those who combat it still want the books that they write about it to bear their name on the title page, and want to become glorious for having despised glory,” a charge that could be leveled against Montaigne himself (I.41, 248–49 [187]).23 Despite the omnipresence of the desire for glory among men, Montaigne does not find it to be one of man’s more glorious attributes. He agrees with those philosophers who argued that “all the glory in the world did not deserve that a man of understanding should so much as stretch out his finger to acquire it” (II.16, 602 [469]). He admits that glory has some incidental advantages, such as gaining one goodwill, making one less exposed to insults, and the like (II.16, 602 [469]), but glory itself he considers to be worthless. Montaigne aims to undermine the allure of Machiavellian glory, and he rejects its pursuit on three grounds. First, he condemns the pursuit of glory as foolish because its attainment is based on the conquest of fortune, something that Montaigne does not consider fully possible. Insofar as Machiavelli aims for the total conquest of fortune, Montaigne would deem him naïve. Second, Montaigne has a moral concern. In the pursuit of ethereal glory, cruelties are inflicted on real people, and Montaigne decries this. Finally, and most importantly, Montaigne rejects the pursuit of glory as worse than useless. If attained, glory does one little good, and Montaigne condemns the price—the loss of the human self that Machiavelli says is necessary to acquire glory—as too steep and unacceptable. Thus, even if one successfully acquires glory by following Machiavelli’s recommendations, Montaigne would deem its costs to the person who achieves it a personal catastrophe. In arguing that glory depends on accident and fortune, Montaigne aims both to undercut its value and to undermine the claims of Machiavelli. Machiavelli argues that the greatest virtue can overcome fortune. For example, he praises the good fortune of Moses in finding the people of Israel enslaved and Romulus’ good fortune to have been exposed at birth. Such “opportunities” enabled them to demonstrate their virtue for “one does not see that they had anything else from fortune than the opportunity.”24 Although Montaigne once says, as Machiavelli might have, that fortune is made by character (I.50, 290 [220]), this statement is related by Montaigne to one’s self-control. Montaigne does not think that one can ever fully control the outcome of events, let alone great events such as politics or war. This is a major difference with Machiavelli. It is not to say that humans cannot influence events or that planning is irrational from Montaigne’s point of view. Far from it. But for Montaigne, unlike for Machiavelli, human beings do not and cannot have enough information or knowledge to control grand events

Against Power and Glory

107

sufficiently. To think otherwise, as Machiavelli does, Montaigne believes naïve. According to Montaigne, fortune always plays a role in human affairs. Montaigne makes this clear with respect to politics. For example, he praises Alexander and Caesar, but he also notes their flaws and luck. More generally, he asserts, “The preservation of states is a thing that probably surpasses our understanding” (III.9, 937 [732]). Like Burke two centuries later, Montaigne conceives of the state as an integral whole, the changing of one part of which must necessarily affect the others in unforeseeable ways. And as Montaigne thinks preserving states is not within our ability, he thinks the successful founding of new states is even more problematic. Similarly, with respect to war Montaigne argues that it “is unwise to think that human wisdom can fill the role of Fortune. And vain is the undertaking of him who presumes to embrace both causes and consequences and to lead by the hand the progress of his affair—vain especially in the deliberations of war” (III.8, 912 [713]). One cannot explain Montaigne’s and Machiavelli’s different views on the role of fortune by their historical circumstances. Montaigne lived through the political “innovations” of Calvin and Luther and the horrific wars of religion that they unleashed, and he repeatedly cites these contemporary examples to show the limits of human abilities.25 But Machiavelli also lived through turbulent times of numerous failed political experiments. The difference between the two thinkers is deeper and more fundamental. The Essays is full of stories of defeated virtue and triumphant luck, and Montaigne thus moves away from judging success by the usual worldly criteria. For Montaigne there is an inner integrity, an inner self, and it is more important and satisfying to essay and know it than it is to achieve any particular external “victory.” In parallel with Montaigne’s analysis of spirited, “friendly” discussion that we saw above, Montaigne is concerned less with winning or losing a fight than with how and for what one fights. He is more interested in fighting for truth than for conquest. Rejecting one of Machiavelli’s main weapons, Montaigne thus argues that if someone is beaten by fraud, “he is beaten not by us, but by fortune; he is killed, not conquered” (I.31, 210 [157]). Montaigne’s sense of battle demands that people struggle honorably. To do otherwise is to cheat oneself as well as one’s opponent. Thus he thinks that “only that man considers himself overcome who knows he was downed neither by trick nor by luck but by valiance, man to man, in a fair and just war” (I.5, 27 [16]). Montaigne values integrity and honor more than the outcome of an event. He shares this sentiment with the Roman historian, Quintus Curtius: “I would rather be sorry for my fortune than ashamed of my victory” (I.6, 31 [19]). And although Montaigne uses some of Machiavelli’s slogans—we should “know how to arm ourselves” and gain “some foothold against Fortune”—he interprets them in radically different ways (III.12, 1022 [799]) and 1024 [801]). In Montaigne’s mouth,

108

Alan Levine

each of these phrases means acquiring self-knowledge and self-control to face fortune, good or bad, rather than controlling external events. Self-control is the only real control one has, according to Montaigne. To attempt to gain glory is to throw oneself into the winds of fortune.26 Machiavelli might gladly allow losers to placate their pride with such philosophical consolations. If it helps victims accept their defeat, he might even recommend peddling such ideas to them. For Machiavelli deems it foolish to limit the tools of battle to swords and strength and not include brainpower in all its possible guises, including fraud. This brings out the two thinkers’ different standards for success. Whereas Machiavelli emphasizes external outcomes, Montaigne emphasizes internal processes that he deems not entirely knowable to outsiders. Even if attained, glory is not a true mark of one’s worth, according to Montaigne, because it depends on fortune and the perceptions of unworthy others. In an essay entitled “Of Glory” (II.16), Montaigne expounds on glory’s numerous interlocking dependences on fortune and others. First, glory depends on appearance. As Machiavelli would admit, the deeds that are glorified are based on the perception of those deeds, not on the deeds themselves. The observer can never know the actor’s true motives or state of mind. Thus, cowards can later claim or be described as having acted with courage, and the deeds of the courageous can be misperceived by those who lack virtue. Second, the actual story told has to please a huge audience, which by its very nature is not a good judge. Thus, to achieve glory, one has to appeal to, and be lauded by, vulgar sentiments. The greatest deeds can go unheralded, while lesser deeds are trumpeted because they are comprehensible to many. Third, Montaigne argues that great individual actions happen every day and on many battlefields and are never recognized. Montaigne wonders about the many valiant men who struggled and died in the 1500 years of French history. Not only are the names of leaders forgotten, but the names of whole battles and victories are lost. Fourth, these names are lost, because great deeds require a great historian to record them in order to be remembered (and similarly, except when glory is fabricated, great historians require great deeds about which to write). Even if one acts splendidly, the fate of one’s glory is in someone else’s hands. Fifth, just as glorious deeds are subject to being forgotten, if one’s deeds are recorded, those writings are subject to the same whims of fortune as the original deeds. Montaigne argues that many books which achieve fame do so for trivial and accidental reasons, whereas many splendid commentaries are forgotten, lost, or destroyed. From ancient Greek and Roman times, with so many glorious deeds and so many outstanding writers to record them, how many, he asks, have survived? Sixth, even if the glorious reputations which have survived the trials and fortunes of time are the best that the West has produced, most of the world, throughout most of human existence, has not recorded its

Against Power and Glory

109

great deeds. Surely, if we had knowledge of those events, the deeds of many famous people would pale by comparison, so glory is based on ignorance, too.27 Machiavelli might concede all of these points on the importance of fortune but object that the stability and durability of regimes are proof of their founder’s virtue and thus that extraordinary virtue can and will triumph over fortune. However, the founders that Machiavelli cites as most extraordinary and as most deserving of glory are largely fictitious. Theseus, Romulus, and Numa, for example, are probably purely mythological, and Machiavelli himself gives reasons to doubt the veracity of what we are told about Moses and Cyrus.28 Machiavelli’s claims about the possibility of overcoming fortune are undermined if no human being can actually do what he advocates. Machiavelli might think that he himself had sufficient virtue to control fortune and that by writing himself he ensured his own hearing and success, but we must make several observations about this claim. First, it holds out the prospect of the greatest glory only for Machiavelli and not his readers, although the latter would gain a share of the glory if they helped execute his plan. Second, it can be argued that Machiavelli has gained infamy and not glory, as his public reputation is as a teacher of evil. Machiavelli might not care about his public reputation and be satisfied with proper praise from the few who understand his project. This might be all the glory that he sought. Even if true, the glory came after Machiavelli was dead, and this raises the question: of what benefit is posthumous praise? Montaigne asserts that fame brings one no benefit when one is dead. “Can it,” Montaigne asks, “designate and benefit nothingness?” (II.16, 610 [475]). Moreover, Machiavelli’s success did to some extent depend on fortune. There might have been an earthquake or volcano that destroyed all copies of his writing and all that knew him. He was fortunate that this did not occur. In short, glory brings one no real benefit and always depends on chance. So, Montaigne asks, why bother? Montaigne’s second major reservation about the pursuit of glory concerns its nightmarish consequences. In criticizing religious utopian schemers, Montaigne laments that “they want to get out of themselves and escape from the man. That is madness: instead of changing into angels, they change into beasts; instead of raising themselves, they lower themselves” (III.13, 1096 [856]). Machiavelli explicitly recommends that his followers go in a beastly direction, unblinkingly recommending beastly and hellish actions when necessary. Again, Montaigne’s observation about religious utopians is relevant: “these are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct” (III.13, 1095 [856]). In this case, “supercelestial thoughts” might also serve as shorthand for the attainment of everlasting glory. The fact that Machiavelli understands the consequences of his recommendations in a way that

110

Alan Levine

utopians do not is a point in his favor, but Montaigne fears that the pursuit of glory endangers human tranquility and safety just as much as the pursuit of piety. Pursuit of such ideals leads to the death and destruction of real people, including sometimes the glory seekers themselves. The third and most important reason Montaigne rejects Machiavellian glory concerns the cost-benefit ratio to the pursuer. On the one hand, Montaigne argues that glory does one little good. Since great glory is posthumous, how does it benefit a dead person? From Montaigne’s point of view, there is no such benefit to the dead. Such wishes to be remembered after one’s death are based on vanity. On the other hand, Montaigne thinks that the pursuit of glory entails great costs to the pursuer. Even if fortune could be overcome by following Machiavelli’s advice, and even if the moral costs of doing so were deemed acceptable, what personal price must the winner of glory pay? What does one have to do and become to succeed in this endeavor?29 To conquer the world, Machiavelli says it is necessary to transform ourselves into half man, half beast Chirons. Or, in another formulation, Machiavelli would have us be fully beastly, half lion and half fox. While Montaigne agrees with Machiavelli in rejecting utopian conceptions of man, he also rejects Machiavelli’s vision as excessively beastly. For Machiavelli, winning great glory seems to require overcoming one’s humanity, at least as Montaigne and most others understand it. This is a price that Machiavelli happily advocates paying, but it is a price too dear for Montaigne. For Montaigne, the aim is to be a man, to be neither more nor less. Anything else involves the loss of self. In sum, although Machiavelli holds out the prospect of glory for himself and a few of his followers, even if it is attained, Machiavelli never raises, let alone answers, the question of what good glory does one. He assumes and insinuates it is good, but gives no reason to believe it. Indeed, insofar as Machiavelli is skeptical about the existence of an afterlife, it is hard to see what argument could ever be made for the good of posthumous glory. If there is no afterlife, one would never know if one achieved glory or not. It may be pleasing to imagine what one may acquire after one is dead, but since nothing is guaranteed (given the possibility of a flood or earthquake), all such thoughts exist only as the product of one’s imagination. Many humans have fanciful imaginings about how they will be remembered, and Montaigne’s worry is that in pursuit of “this fanciful and imaginary life,” we will “go and lose our real and essential life” (II.16, 612 [476]). Montaigne repeatedly warns that in the pursuit of glory, just as in the pursuit of power, the ambitious often sacrifice real, tangible goods. He writes, Surely my heart is not so inflated or windy that I would choose to exchange a solid, meaty, and marrowy pleasure like health for an imaginary, immaterial, and airy pleasure. Glory, even that of the four sons of Aymon,30 is bought too

Against Power and Glory

111

dear by a man of my humor if it costs him three good attacks of colic. Health, in God’s name! (II.37, 766 [597])

Based on his conception of “our real and essential life,” the deed most worthy of praise is living one’s life well. Montaigne avers, “All the glory that I aspire to in my life is to have lived it tranquilly” (II.16, 605 [471]). Unfortunately, he laments, “Who does not willingly exchange health, rest, and life for reputation and glory, the most useless, worthless, and false coin that is current among us?” (I.39, 236 [178]).

MONTAIGNE’S SOLUTION: GO “HOME” If power and glory are as harmful as Montaigne suggests, why do people pursue them? Why pursue “fanciful and imaginary” goods at the expense of “real and essential” ones? The answer, according to Montaigne, is that human beings are full of illusions, and the pursuit of power and glory are merely the most dramatic manifestations of this ordinary human phenomenon. The main source of these self-alienating illusions, according to Montaigne, lies not in the economic system or the political regime; the problem is in our minds. With the very act of thinking come the seeds of discontent, as people’s minds and imaginations conceive how their lot in life or the world as a whole could be better. Our imagination, a natural faculty, tempts us and leads us out of ourselves. Freedom of imagination leads to “unruliness in thought” and “is an advantage that is sold [to man] very dear, and in which he has little cause to glory, for from it springs the principal source of the ills that oppress him: sin, disease, irresolution, confusion, despair” (II.12, 437 [336]). Instead of pursuing natural desires, such as eating, drinking, and procreating, we pursue “superfluous and artificial” desires (II.12, 450 [346]). Montaigne laments that “these extraneous desires, which ignorance of the good and a false opinion have insinuated into us, are in such a great number that they drive out almost all the natural ones” (II.12, 450 [346]).31 These artificial desires have two sources, internal impulses and opinions internalized from the customs and beliefs of one’s time and place. Our untethered imagination naturally raises questions, such as where we come from, what happens after we die, and the meaning of life. Montaigne is not sorry we ask these questions, but he laments the fear and anxiety that accompany them. These fears and anxieties and concerns for the future often ruin the present. As he puts it, “Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is” (I.3, 18 [8]). In order to pursue our desires and to allay our fears, humans invent doctrines and worldly institutions to support them, but Montaigne fears

112

Alan Levine

that such ideas and institutions often cause more harm than good. We are raised with ideas and habits that further alienate us from ourselves.32 Moreover, ideologues, demagogues, and cynics worsen the situation by manipulating human confusion, anxiety, and unhappiness and tantalizing us with the imaginings of their minds. Since the human problem begins with the mind, it is in the mind that a solution must be found. Montaigne takes aim at the root of the problem. His political project is to a large degree an attempt to tame and control the unruliness of the human mind, whether it flees itself in pursuit of power, glory, or any other external thing. As we have repeatedly seen, he urges his readers not to focus their lives on the acquisition of external things and instead to focus on self-exploration. He does not in the first place ask them to do so because the pursuit of power and glory could lead to inequality, suffering, hurt feelings, or for any other reason not central to themselves. Rather, he asks them to return “home” for their own good. Their own interest demands it. Montaigne does not think that a permanent cure for the unruliness of the human mind is possible, so self-exploration is not an activity with a fixed endpoint. Rather, it is a way of life. Montaigne wants people to focus their main energies on mastering themselves, not on mastering others as Machiavelli would have us do. Until one can understand and control the myriad contradictory forces acting on one’s inner being, one is doomed to an erratic life of inner turmoil, contradictory concerns, and worry. The key to a good life is to think through, to essay, these impulses via self-exploration: The range of our desires should be circumscribed and restrained to a narrow limit of the nearest and most contiguous good things; and moreover their course should be directed not in a straight line that ends up elsewhere, but in a circle whose two extremities by a short sweep meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions that are performed without this reflexive movement, I mean a searching and genuine reflexive movement—the actions, for example, of the avaricious, the ambitious, and so many others who run in a straight line, whose course carries them ever forward—are erroneous and diseased actions. (III.10, 988–89 [773])33

Montaigne rejects the “avaricious” and “ambitious” desires that Machiavelli enflames as “erroneous and diseased.” Unlike Machiavelli, for whom what is foreign can and should be incorporated into what one already possesses, Montaigne wants us to distinguish “what is foreign” from “what is our very own” (III.10, 989 [773]). He urges his readers not to confuse the two. The difference between the two thinkers is located in the question of whether or not human beings have a “home.” Machiavelli seems to argue that there is no home, whether cosmologically, politically, or psychologically. Montaigne disagrees with the last point. The “home” analogy is cen-

Against Power and Glory

113

tral to his conception of the self. A normative notion of “home” allows him to reconcile the existing reality, “We are never at home, we are always beyond” (I.3, 18 [8]), with the moral injunction, “You have quite enough to do at home; don’t go away” (III.10, 981 [767]). To him, self-abandonment is responsible for most of the man-made ills, so it is on this basis that he pleads for man to “break free from the violent clutches that engage us elsewhere and draw us away from ourselves” (I.39, 236 [178]), and he condemns those who wander into other things as seeking “business only for busyness” (III.10, 981 [767]). For Montaigne, the aim is to be a man, neither more nor less. There “is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly,” he insists, “no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally” (III.13, 1091, [852]). Self-knowledge is what Montaigne would have us acquire, and for guidance he offers himself (as modeled in his book), and Socrates. Montaigne calls Socrates “the first of all human souls in reformation” (III.5, 870 [680]), “a perfect model in all great qualities” (III.12, 1034 [809]), and he says that Socrates is “the man most worthy to be known” (III.12, 1014 [793]) because he knew and accepted what he was. “Socrates was a man, and wanted neither to be nor to seem anything else,” he observes (III.5, 870 [681]). Socrates reveals the human soul in its essence, as “neither elevated nor rich,” and Montaigne says that Socrates excels in what a human being can be for “he shows [the soul] only as healthy, but assuredly with a very blithe and clear health” (III.12, 1014 [793]).34 The key to attaining the truest, most authentic, freest, and happiest life possible for a human being is self-exploration, or what Montaigne calls the essaying process. Self-exploration is necessitated by our lack of homeness in the world. If we were born in a simple, direct harmony with nature (as represented, for example, by Montaigne’s utopian cannibals (I.31) or Rousseau’s notion of natural man), self-exploration would not be necessary. But for “sophisticated” human beings like ourselves who grow up in an artificial world, self-exploration is the only way that peace of mind can genuinely be achieved. We must come to know and fight against our natural tendencies to flee from ourselves. We must scrutinize the internal fantasies that the imagination projects. And because self-consciousness itself and the customs according to which we are educated and reared are responsible for our deviance from nature’s simple directives, we must work hard to attain and maintain a more natural connection to our more authentic selves. We must work hard, because we must untangle our own inner impulses and the tendencies propagated by outside cultural forces that have been internalized by and mediate us to ourselves. For Montaigne, an individual can truly be authentic only after having undergone a rigorous process of self-exploration.

114

Alan Levine

Self-exploration makes people as authentic and as free as they can be. As his emphasis on fraud makes clear, authenticity is not a major concern of Machiavelli’s. To the extent that it is a value for him, it is about realizing one’s virtue in the world. It is not an interior authenticity. By contrast, for Montaigne, authenticity is primarily interior. On the one hand, we simply are. On the other hand, we are active and critical, aware of, yet distanced from things, including ourselves. In the former case, our body, impulses, thoughts, and habits are beyond our control. They are in flux and movement caused by nature or a fixed pattern caused by habit. In the latter case, we perceive and have a probing judgment that engages and affects its objects. Only when the active self engages the passive self and comes to know how phenomena work in themselves can a human being begin to have any self-knowledge at all. Our only choice is whether we should consciously affirm how nature and habit work in us or whether we should fight those unchosen tendencies. In either case, through reflection and choice we make ourselves and the world more our own than do unreflective people. Self-reflective people are thus freer than the unreflective because their actions are self-consciously accepted and affirmed. Self-exploration also helps people regulate their unruly impulses. Whereas Machiavelli, through fear, force, and fraud, is content to control or manipulate people who act on their unruly impulses, Montaigne is interested in empowering people to deal with their psychic impulses in more authentic ways. Our active and passive natures lead Montaigne to hypothesize a double self. “We are . . . double within ourselves,” he says, “with the result that we do not believe what we believe, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn” (II.16, 603 [469]). This doubleness goes a long way toward explaining the unruliness of the human mind and the unhappiness that plagues the species. Man’s critical faculties can lead an individual away from himself, as can the natural impulses and anxieties of his disposition. The fact that there is no necessary relation between the dictates of one’s critical faculties and the desires of one’s disposition, however, opens each individual to conflict between one’s passive, habitual self and one’s evaluation of it.35 This gap can result in self-hatred and can be widened through the internalization of external views, such as religious, metaphysical, or political doctrines. Montaigne hopes to minimize this divide by encouraging human beings to essay both parts of themselves. To restore the tranquility of soul that Montaigne believes either does or can exist by nature, one must probe the various particulars of one’s own passive, habitual disposition— fears, anxieties, desires, hopes, inclinations—and subject one’s critical faculties to their own scrutiny. It is only by engaging in these forms of selfseeking that one can begin to peel away the things that one thinks are driving one’s actions and move toward the things that really are. We might not be able to fully comprehend what truly moves us or fully eliminate our

Against Power and Glory

115

unruly impulses or internal gaps, but by being aware of them, one is able both more directly to confront the actual source of one’s difficulties and gain a distance from them, which is critical in purging oneself of unruly impulses (such as the desires for power and glory).36 Montaigne argues that to a limited extent self-essaying also allows us to create ourselves. The process of exploring oneself leads not only to the uncovering of a preexisting self, but to the creation of oneself. Montaigne speaks of his Essays as “a book consubstantial with its author.” Each one makes the other: “I have no more made my book than my book made me” (II.18, 648 [504]). “I have had to fashion and compose myself so often to bring myself out, that the model itself has to some extent grown firm and taken shape. Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones” (II.18, 647–8 [504]). Self-exploration not only locates and amplifies a preexisting self, but the process changes the self that is being sought. Rather than build “new modes and orders,” as Machiavelli would have us do, Montaigne would have us construct ourselves.37 We may not be able to know abstract truths about the human essence, but we can know subjective truths about the phenomena of the world. According to Montaigne, the tools available to human beings are inadequate for possessing transcendent knowledge,38 so feeling emerges for him as a less articulate but more reliable guide than language. Language necessarily distorts the phenomena one wants to describe. Language, “this airy medium of words” (II.6, 359 [274]), represents but a clumsy attempt at selfarticulation. It is neither subtle nor flexible enough to capture human thoughts and feelings. Not only is it overly rigid and insufficiently penetrating in its descriptions but it imprisons the self in the terms and analysis it uses and invents. Human beings use language to reveal, but it conceals at the same time. Because human beings live in a phenomenal world, feeling serves as the best conduit to life. “I shall know it well enough when I feel it,” he says (III.13, 1050 [821]), for “I judge myself only by actual sensation, not by reasoning” (III.13, 1074 [840]). Feeling oneself, and feeling for oneself, are both active and passive. Montaigne wants the individual to focus attention on his natural movements, metaphorically and literally to “get in touch with oneself.” It is not surprising therefore that Montaigne uses numerous reflexive verbs with corporeal connotations: se sonder (to sound oneself), se gouter (to taste oneself), se regarder (to look for oneself), and the like. He uses verbs that reference all of the five senses. For example, in one line he refers to himself through three senses and knits them together with a childlike sense of play, saying, “I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others always go elsewhere . . . as for me, I roll about in myself” (II.17, 641 [499]). If human beings cannot know essences, they can feel phenomena. If they cannot know truth in the abstract, they do have the power to know truths about themselves.

116

Alan Levine

And what does Montaigne find at the core of the self? Paradox. Everything and nothing. Sometimes he asserts that we are “entirely destitute and void” (II.8, 364 [278]) or “null” [neant] (II.2, 328 [249]), and he deems this true about transcendent things. More commonly, however, Montaigne finds many things. He stresses that he does not find a single “will” or “essence” at the core of the self, but instead finds a hodgepodge of all sorts of different wills, impulses, and tendencies: “Man, in all things and throughout, is but patchwork and motley” (II.20, 656 [511]); “Life is an uneven, irregular, and multiform movement” (III.3, 796 [621]); “We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game” (II.1, 321 [244]). Because much of the self is unformed, unarticulated, or patchwork, Montaigne finds “natural weakness” (II.12, 486 [375]). That is, unlike Machiavelli or Nietzsche, he does not find a strong will that must be willed. This is crucial, because if self-knowledge led to the discovery of a titanic will to power or will to glory, Montaigne would have no grounds to condemn the willing of it, even if it meant others were hurt in the process. Nonetheless, Montaigne does find things in himself that horrify him. The “more I frequent myself and know myself,” he remarks, “the more my deformity astonishes me, and the less I understand myself” (III.11, 1006 [787]). He finds that all his so-called virtues are tinctured with vice, that he is self-interested and prone to want to break many moral strictures, and is eminently aware of his own tendencies to unruliness. In one sense, the lack that Montaigne finds “at home” is disappointing. But it is disappointing only if one expects cosmic answers. If one is less demanding and more realistic in one’s expectations, one can find oneself full of never-ending delights—for so much is there, waiting to be found, explored, and shaped. Montaigne regards the process of self-exploration, of essaying chez soi, as extremely pleasurable. Wherever he looks and everything that he thinks, feels, or believes serves as raw material for his self-questing: “being consists in movement and action. Wherefore each man in some sort exists in his work” (II.8, 366 [279]). He finds beautiful, moving, and noble wills and desires in himself, too. In fact, it is precisely the juxtaposition and entanglement between the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and the noble and the base that make human beings so fascinating. And there is no better place to find them than in oneself, because each of us has more access to his or her own feelings, wills, and desires, than he or she does to those in other people or to anything else. In short, to Montaigne happiness cannot result from diverting one’s attention outward. A life focused on acquisition of power or glory is bound to leave one troubled and discontented. All healthy associations, including with oneself, depend on healthy people, and one cannot be healthy if one is dominated by the unruly aspects of one’s self, such as the desire to acquire externals. Self-essaying is necessary for a reflective person to be happy

Against Power and Glory

117

and master himself. A human being may not be able to subdue the world simply through his own virtue as Machiavelli believes, but Montaigne says he can gain knowledge of himself by studying and exploring his movements and actions, including thoughts. Each individual must take care of his internal self: “He who would do his job would see that his first lesson is to know what he is and what is proper for him. And he who knows himself no longer takes extraneous business for his own; he loves and cultivates himself before anything else; he refuses superfluous occupations and useless thoughts and projects” (I.3, 18 [9]). This is nothing to glory in, but it can and should be a never-ending source of wonder and delight.

CONCLUSION One revealing passage summarizes the logic behind Montaigne’s critiques of the acquisition of power and glory: “it has never occurred to me,” he concludes, “to wish for empire or royalty, or for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. I do not aim in that direction, I love myself too much” (III.7, 895 [699]). In making his arguments against the human ambitions that Machiavelli—not to mention romantics, nationalists, and would-be aristocrats—enflames, Montaigne does not primarily appeal to altruism or virtue but to his conception of self-interest properly understood. Rather than criticizing the pursuits of power and glory on the grounds that they hurt others, he explains how they jeopardize the greatest personal goods, self-exploration, tranquility and health, and destroy the possibility of enjoying the greatest social goods, friendship and discussion. Montaigne rejects imaginary external “goods” in favor of self-cultivation, saying that “to compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most” (III.13, 1088 [850–51]). “Greatness of soul,” he says, “is not so much pressing upward and forward as knowing how to set oneself in order and circumscribe oneself” (III.13, 1090 [852]). Montaigne thus limits his ambition to what he variously describes as “a middle station” (III.7, 895 [700]), or as “in a lowly way . . . strictly for myself” (III.7, 895 [699]). But this description of his ambition as “low” is ironic. It is low only from the conventional point of view of worldly achievement. It is “low” as Socrates’s was— which is to say that, in fact, it is as high and as legitimate as any human ambition can be. Against all the temptations to acquire, Montaigne tries to get ambitious human beings to better understand their desires by appealing to self-interest: “Since we will not do so out of conscience, at least out of ambition let us reject ambition” (III.10, 1001 [783]).

118

Alan Levine

In the end, Montaigne’s appreciation of an individual’s good and Machiavelli’s emphasis on political necessity complement each other. Montaigne is right in rooting the human problem in the unruliness of the imagination. Like Montaigne, Machiavelli acknowledges a natural discontentedness in the human mind. He even goes so far as to say that mankind’s natural discontent is a “disease” that leads to “enmities and war,” and that this “in the end was the cause of the destruction of the [Roman] republic.”39 But the problem as Machiavelli describes it is rooted in desire and is one of unlimited ends and limited means. He writes, “nature has created men so that they are able to desire everything and are unable to attain everything. So, since the desire is always greater than the power of acquiring, the result is discontent with what one possesses and a lack of satisfaction with it.”40 Similarly, he avers, “human appetites are insatiable, for since from nature they have the ability and the wish to desire all things and from fortune the ability to achieve few of them, there continually results from this a discontent in human minds and a disgust with the things they possess.”41 Given this disparity between ends and means, Machiavelli aims to show his readers how they can master fortune and acquire what they desire (as long as they channel their desires into the paths that he sketches). He therefore provokes and shapes his reader’s desires away from wealth and sex and toward the desire to acquire power and glory. But why should we think that satisfaction of the desires for power and glory in fact leads to happiness? The evidence seems to indicate the contrary. Famous and powerful people regularly seem to be unhappy. Montaigne gives a deeper account of human unhappiness than Machiavelli, and Montaigne is correct that happiness comes not from the satisfaction of desire but from a proper appreciation of the deeper and more essential human qualities. But Machiavelli is correct that there is external danger, and in his plans for dealing with it, Machiavelli’s political awareness is necessary insofar as a major threat to human happiness comes from the possibility of being conquered by others. Not all people are “at home” in the Montaignian sense, and at least some of them must be dealt with as Machiavelli advises. Machiavelli is right that a state must continually acquire power. Insofar as “human things are always in motion, either they ascend or they descend,”42 so one must beware of external threats and act prudently to avoid them or risk being conquered, enslaved, or killed. Montaigne does not advocate a total retreat from politics in order to essay oneself, and for a society to do so would be not only self-indulgent but a recipe for disaster. Although Machiavelli and Montaigne emphasize different spheres of life, they are each aware of the other’s point of view. Machiavelli assumes that power and glory are good to get the ambitious reader to follow his path, complete his project, and look after the “common benefit to everyone.”43 This may not be the happiest or most satisfying life for a thoughtful person,

Against Power and Glory

119

especially if someone else would secure the peace, but Machiavelli never says it is. He manipulates his readers’ pre-existing ambitions. Moreover, Machiavelli himself did not live the life of conquest that he recommends to others. He was the individual genius who put the scheme in motion. His tool was the pen and not the sword. We have no evidence that Machiavelli essayed himself, but it is clear that his project does not allow him to explain himself in public. Insofar as he is a thinker and self-aware, Montaigne’s criticisms do not all apply to him. Montaigne’s criticisms as I have articulated them in this essay apply to Machiavellians, not necessarily to Machiavelli. Similarly, Montaigne knows that his radically individual-centered life assumes a modicum of political stability. Indeed, Montaigne was politically active and persuasively argued for new political institutions. He was indifferent to regime type, but he was one of the first to powerfully and effectively argue for the separation of the public from the private sphere and for the creation of a private sphere of free conscience and free political judgment. His political proposals and his powerful praise of the private life helped bring about the weltanschauung of liberalism. Indeed, the political ideas of Machiavelli and the private life articulated by Montaigne come together in the liberal republic and the founding of the United States, a topic on which Harvey Mansfield has also written.44 But that is a story for another day.

NOTES All citations in the body of the paper are to Montaigne’s Essais. Each citation consists of four numbers. The first Roman numeral joined by a period to an Arabic numeral refers to the book and essay number, respectively. (II.12 thus means book two, essay twelve.) The middle number is the page number in the French Pléiade edition, Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat (Paris: Gallimard, 1962). The last number [in brackets] refers to the page number in Donald Frame’s English translation, The Complete Works of Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957). This paper draws on my book, Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self (Lanham and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2001). I thank Lynn Addington, Stanley Brubaker, and G. Borden Flanagan for their comments on earlier drafts. 1. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), ch. 3, 14. 2. Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); and Taming of the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989). 3. For Montaigne’s political and philosophical critiques of Christianity, see Levine, Sensual Philosophy, ch. 1. On a biographical note, Montaigne’s mother was

120

Alan Levine

born Jewish into a family that had several of its members burned at the stake during the Inquisition in Spain. She, however, converted to Catholicism and became a fanatic. Several of Montaigne’s siblings converted to Protestantism, a risky act during the religious wars of the sixteenth century, but Montaigne maintained good relations with all of them. He had a niece who was made a Catholic saint. At her canonical hearings Montaigne was given official credit for keeping her in the Catholic fold, yet in 1676 his book was placed on the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books, where it remained until the Index was abolished in 1961. 4. For example, Montaigne writes, “all those imaginary, artificial descriptions of a government prove ridiculous and unfit to put into practice. These great, lengthy altercations about the best form of society and the rules most suitable to bind us, are altercations fit only for the exercise of our minds . . . [and] have no life apart from that” (III.9, 934 [730]). He wants to keep “imaginary” philosophical speculations out of politics for the same reason as Machiavelli: politics is the sphere of the practical and the real; it must be concerned with governing human beings as they are. 5. Montaigne agrees with Machiavelli about the logic of real politique, that politics requires dirty deeds, and that fraud is easy and effective. For example, like Machiavelli, Montaigne believes that we are sometimes presented “with such an urgent necessity that the laws must need give some place to it,” that in such times of emergency “it would be better to make the laws will what they can do, since they cannot do what they will,” and that a virtuous prince must thus know “not only how to command according to the laws, but how to command the laws themselves, when the public necessity require[s]” (I.23, 121 & 122 [89 & 90]). 6. Montaigne was a member of the Paris and Bordeaux parliaments, mayor of Bordeaux (in the four-hundred-year history of Bordeaux, Montaigne was only the third mayor to be reelected), and a confidant of kings. He advised both the Catholic Henry III and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, who became King Henry IV. Before he was king, Henry IV stayed at Montaigne’s chateau when he was in the area and asked Montaigne to come to Paris with him once he decided that “Paris is worth a mass.” Montaigne recurrently served as a negotiator between the Catholic and Huguenot factions, because he was one of the few people in France to have good relations with both sides in the conflict. Montaigne did have enemies, but Catherine de Medici, the power behind the Catholic throne for fifty years, personally intervened to free him when he was once imprisoned in the Bastille. 7. Machiavelli does this in part to get his readers to complete his project. See Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, preface. 8. Montaigne calls the process of self-exploration the essaying process, and he makes this concept the title of his work, Essays. He also coined the modern meaning of the word “essay” as a noun. 9. Machiavelli, Prince, ch. 7, 29. 10. Machiavelli, Prince, ch. 7, 30. 11. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), I.30.1. (Citations to the Discourses include the book, chapter, and paragraph numbers.) Discourses I. 29–30 explain the “necessity” of the successful captain’s difficulties with his superior. 12. In “By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End,” the very first essay of his book (I.1), Montaigne cites examples of those who win over superior power with

Against Power and Glory

121

acts of boldness, but these discussions are of the vanquished, not of successful captains. 13. The “dirty hands” theme has been well developed since Machiavelli. For interesting discussions, see Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Les Mains Salles” or “Dirty Hands” in his No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York: Knopf, 1976); and Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (2) (Winter 1973): 160–80. 14. Montaigne also remarks, “In general, greatness has this evident advantage, that it can step down whenever it pleases, and that it almost has the choice of both conditions” (III.7, 894 [699]). But no one pursues something so that he could have the option of renouncing it. 15. Montaigne also notes the technical distinction between the man and his office: “For, to be precise about it, a king has nothing that is properly his own” (III.6, 881 [688–89]). Even if a king’s possessions are not formally his own, he still gets to enjoy them, so this point is unlikely to deter an ambitious person. However, Montaigne’s claim is deeper: a good ruler must be prepared to sacrifice everything, including himself. 16. “Of the Inequality that Is between Us” (I.42) humorously explores these points. 17. Machiavelli’s virtue seems to involve the insight that there is no home, cosmologically, politically, and perhaps even psychologically. This will be explored more fully below. 18. Montaigne relates how several pairs of friends ran afoul of frightened authorities, so he highlights the ways in which a private friendship can be a political threat. See “Of Friendship” (I.28). 19. Discussion with “talented gentlemen” is one “Of Three Kinds of Association” (III.3) that Montaigne praises. He also favors associations with “beautiful and wellbred women” and books. 20. See, for example, the descriptions at III.8, 917 [717] and III.3, 802 [625–26]. 21. David Quint, Montaigne and the Quality of Mercy: Ethical and Political Themes in the Essais (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), also notes Montaigne’s aim to “tame” aristocratic warfare. Whereas I see it as an attempt to tame the unruliness of the human mind, and therefore as of universal importance, however, Quint sees it only as an attempt at “taming an early modern aristocratic culture of violence and cruelty” (ix). I agree with Quint that this is part of Montaigne’s most immediate historical aims, but I disagree that this is all that Montaigne intends. 22. III.7, 897 [701]. See also the amusing anecdotes about Favorinus and Asinus Pollio (III.7, 899 [702–3]). 23. Montaigne claims he writes not for glory but so his friends and family may remember him (“To The Reader,” 9 [2]). Yet if this is true, why does he bother to publish, let alone publish aggressively (five publications during the last twelve years of his life)? Wondering about the same thing, in 1674 the French philosopher Malebranche asked, “If this was true [that he was writing only for his family and friends], why did he publish [several] editions? One alone wouldn’t be sufficient for his parents and friends?” Nicolas Malebranche, De la Recherche de la Vérité in Oeuvres (2 vols.), ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and Germain Malbreil (Paris: Gallimard, 1979 [1674]), bk. II, part II, ch. V, vol. I: 278–79.

122

Alan Levine

Rousseau, somewhat more harshly, also accuses Montaigne of seeking fame. In his Confessions, he accuses Montaigne of revealing only lovable (aimables) vices and goes so far as to put Montaigne at the head of the falsely sincere: “Je mets Montaigne à la tête de ces faux sincères qui veulent tromper en disant vrai.” In his Rêveries, he is equally harsh. He says, “Je fais la même entreprise que Montaigne, mais avec un bout contraire au sein: car il n’écrivoit ses essais que pour les autres, et je n’écris mes rêveries que pour moi.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Première Préface aux Confessions, manuscrit de Neuchâtel, and Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire in Oeuvres complètes, eds. Gagnebin, Raymond, and Osmont (Paris: Pléiade, 1959), vol. I: 1149–50 and 1001, respectively. Perhaps the most extreme account of Montaigne’s ambitions is David Schaefer’s view that Montaigne “aspires to become a kind of super-ruler of generations of human beings, extending into the indefinite (if not infinite) future, thereby achieving a glory rivaling or surpassing that of the greatest founder-lawgivers, both religious and secular, of the past.” Schaefer, Political Philosophy of Montaigne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 395–96. Schaefer sees Montaigne as sharing Machiavelli’s deepest aspirations. While Montaigne surely publishes in search of recognition, he also says he does it seeking friends and to instruct the public in the essaying process. On this alternative explanation, see Levine, Sensual Philosophy, 124–27. 24. Machiavelli, Prince, ch.6, 23. 25. Citing the major religious innovators of his age as examples of human failures is more than irony. It should also be understood as religious commentary. 26. Judith Shklar sees a similar contrast between Montaigne and Machiavelli. Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), ch. 1. Those who disagree include Schaefer, Political Philosophy of Montaigne, 347–51, and Alexandre Nicolaï, “Le Machiavélisme de Montaigne, 1–4,” Bulletin de la société des amis de Montaigne 3 (1957–58):4–7. For a balanced comparison, see also Géralde Nakam, Les Essais de Montaigne: Miroir et procès de leur temps (Paris: A.-G. Nizet, 1984), 245–51. 27. Montaigne makes these arguments principally in “Of Glory” (II.16, especially 610–13 [475–77]). 28. For discussions of these figures, see, among other places, Machiavelli, Prince, ch. 6, and Discourses, 1.1.5. 29. See also Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 52. 30. The four sons of Aymon were Charlemagne’s main rivals. That this reference is lost on most readers today illustrates Montaigne’s point about the role of fortune in securing glory. 31. Montaigne distinguishes between three types of desires: those that are natural and necessary, such as eating and drinking; those that are natural and not necessary, such as sexual intercourse; and those that are neither natural nor necessary. “Of this last type are nearly all those of men; they are all superfluous and artificial” (II.12, 450 [346]). It is these false opinions and the zealous pursuit of them that creates the specifically human ills. 32. Montaigne considers self-alienation to be ubiquitous: “Every man rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no man has arrived at himself” (III.12 1022

Against Power and Glory

123

[799]). “We shall never heap enough insults,” he says, “on the unruliness of our mind” (I.4, 27 [15]). 33. While Montaigne here speaks of “desires,” he holds the same to be true of the will. 34. The difference between Montaigne and Machiavelli thus resembles the difference between Machiavelli and Socrates. 35. Many people have written on Montaigne’s conception of self-exploration. Among these, Jean Starobinski, Montaigne in Motion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), is the most psychologically attuned; Frederick Rider, The Dialectic of Selfhood in Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973) is interesting; and Ermanno Bencivenga, The Discipline of Subjectivity: An Essay on Montaigne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pays particular attention to the image of the double self. 36. It is because of this psychological astuteness that Jacques Lacan called Montaigne the first psychoanalyst. Jacques Lacan, “Propos sur la causalité psychique” in Écrits (Paris: Le Seuil, 1966), 179. 37. Machiavelli, Discourses, I.Pref.1. 38. For a full account of this, see Levine, Sensual Philosophy, ch. 1, especially 64–79. But it is for this reason that Montaigne approves of the tale told of the Milesian “wench” who tripped the philosopher Thales, who was spending all his time gazing upward in contemplation of the heavens. “She gave him good counsel,” says Montaigne, “to look rather to himself [à soy] than to the sky” (II.12, 519 [402]). With this quotation, Montaigne echoes Cicero’s famous praise of Socrates as the first to bring philosophy down from the heavens. Referring to Socrates, Montaigne writes: “The wisest man that ever was, when they asked him what he knew, answered that he knew this much, that he knew nothing” (II.12, 480–81 [370]). He was able to do this because he had some self-knowledge: “Ignorance that knows itself, that judges itself and condemns itself, is not complete ignorance: to be that it must be ignorant of itself [s’ignore soy-mesme]” (II.12, 482 [372]). 39. Machiavelli, Discourses, I.37.1. 40. Machiavelli, Discourses, I.37.1. 41. Machiavelli, Discourses, II.Pref.3. 42. Machiavelli, Discourses, II.Pref.2. 43. Machiavelli, Discourses, I.Pref.1. Of course, not “everyone” individually blossoms in Machiavelli’s scheme. Some are eliminated, but the common good prevails. 44. For example, see Harvey Mansfield, The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) and America’s Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

6 The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus Diana J. Schaub

Rousseau is often recognized as the first poetic modern philosopher—his poetry intimately connected to his dissatisfaction with modern life and thought as epitomized in the unerotic liberalism of Hobbes and Locke and the man it created, the bourgeois. According to Allan Bloom, Modern philosophy . . . could not inspire a great poetry corresponding to itself. The exemplary man whom it produces is too contemptible for the noble Muse; he can never be a model for those who love the beautiful. The fact that he cannot is symptomatic of how the prosaic new philosophy truncates the human possibility. . . . Rousseau, a philosopher-poet like Plato, tried to recapture the poetry in the world.1

Yet before we give the laurel to Rousseau, we ought to consider a possible rival: Montesquieu. Despite Montesquieu’s reputation as the philosopher of commerce, his literary activity would seem to indicate that he, unlike his precursors, did possess a poetic sensibility. Almost a half-century before the appearance of Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse and Emile, Montesquieu was very self-consciously experimenting with the novel (“une espece de roman”) as a new, more public conveyance for his political philosophizing. By encompassing a wider audience through a literary form that appeals to the passions, Montesquieu sought to forward, and redirect, the project of enlightenment. With the Persian Letters, he fashioned a new poetry proper to modernity. In many respects, Rousseau follows Montesquieu’s lead. For both thinkers, the re-enchantment of the world requires that philosophy concern itself not simply with man, but with man and woman—humanity in its 125

126

Diana J. Schaub

bifurcated state. Philosophy must again explore the mysteries of sexual passion—things little dreamt of in the sere-souled individualism of the English bachelors. While the early moderns sought to secure a vastly expanded private realm, they were not terribly insightful about the nature of those private passions. According to Montesquieu, man is not a solitary being, but a coupling being. A philosophy of man that fails to take account of woman is inadequate to the task of guiding humankind’s common life. The early liberals, in keeping with their individualist premise, had been on the whole unconcerned with the bearing of sexual difference on political life. (This very indifference, of course, spoke in favor of sexual equality and is the theoretical forebear of equal-rights feminism.) Montesquieu’s treatment of women is considerably more complex: more aware of the pivotal role of women, more appreciative of sexual differences, and at the same time more impressed with the difficulties of harmonizing the domestic and political realms. After the Persian Letters (1721), and before undertaking The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu wrote a number of short tales of a decidedly erotic character: The Temple of Gnidus (1725), Voyage to Paphos (1727), Histoire Véritable, and Arsace and Isménie. As the last two were not published by Montesquieu during his lifetime, and as the second is traditionally, but not certainly, attributed to Montesquieu, The Temple of Gnidus would seem to hold the most promise for a commentator. Although the critics both then and now have almost uniformly dismissed The Temple of Gnidus as an “insipidity,” it may be worthwhile to take another look, especially since Montesquieu himself thought enough of the work to bring out a new edition, with a revised preface, in 1743. In addition to the indications that Montesquieu took the work seriously, Rousseau seems to have done so also. Not that he thought well of it. In the course of a discussion of falsehood and fiction in the “Fourth Walk” of his Reveries, Rousseau delivers the following criticism: [I]f there is some moral lesson in The Temple of Gnidus, this intention is badly flawed and obscured by the licentious details and lascivious images of the book. What did the author do to spread a cloak of modesty over his work? He pretended that it was the translation of a Greek manuscript and described the discovery of this manuscript in the manner most calculated to persuade his readers of the truth of his account. If that is not positively a lie, I should like to know what the word means.2

It seems that Rousseau objects to the austere Greek robe almost as much as the saucy French undergarments. While the educated public may not be fooled by the cloaking device, Rousseau frets over “the many simple and credulous readers”

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

127

who have been genuinely deceived by this manuscript story told in apparent good faith by a serious author and who have unsuspectingly drunk from what appeared to be an ancient goblet the poison of which they would at least have been wary if it had been presented to them in a modern cup.3

Similar complaints might well be lodged against some of Rousseau’s writings. Putting new wine in old bottles—radicalizing modernity in the accents of ancient virtue—is vintage Rousseau. And on the morals question, surely the Confessions outdoes The Temple of Gnidus in prurience. A full understanding of Rousseau’s remarks here would require an interpretation of the Reveries, but perhaps we can at least say that Rousseau’s dismissal of the story is not as straightforward as it seems. Indeed, his final remark (before turning to the examination of his own conduct and writings) holds out the possibility of a more benign assessment: If The Temple of Gnidus is a useful work, the story of the Greek manuscript is no more than an innocent fiction; but it is a reprehensible lie if the work is dangerous.4

Rousseau rightly draws our attention to Montesquieu’s denial of authorship. Just as in the Persian Letters, Montesquieu poses as a humble anonymous translator, and just as in the earlier work, more than self-protection is at stake. The translation ruse is integral to The Temple of Gnidus. As Rousseau sensed, the ruse provides a kind of artistic liberty from anachronism. It leaves Montesquieu free to commingle past and present—in effect, to create a tableau of the past suitable to the present. In the Persian Letters, it is not time but place (Orient/Occident) that the translation ruse overcomes. The very possibility of translation points to a certain universal human nature underlying the multiplicity of cultures. Through his “translations,” Montesquieu capitalizes on our voyeuristic curiosity about other times and places to teach us something about ourselves. Montesquieuian multiculturalism is in the service of self-knowledge. In his “Translator’s Preface” to The Temple of Gnidus, Montesquieu offers an elaborate account of the text’s line of transmission: written by an anonymous post-Sapphic Greek author, eventually unearthed from the entombment of a Christian bishop’s library and sold, presumably by Turkish merchants, to a French ambassador, falling finally into the hands of the present translator. I believe that Montesquieu intends the shifting custody of this text as a pattern for Western culture altogether which passes from the formative period of Greek antiquity to a Christian era, wherein the classical legacy is both preserved and suppressed, to a period of cross-fertilization with the East, and finally to a period of European enlightenment and ascendancy. The movements from one period to the next, however, are far

128

Diana J. Schaub

from smooth. The works of the mind do not descend intact through the generations. Indeed, they are more likely to descend into the grave with their authors. In Montesquieu’s description of the process of cultural inheritance, images of decay prevail. Books are imperiled by both public and private indifference; we are told that most of the Greek authors have perished “in the ruin of libraries” or “by the negligence of families.”5 While Christianity represents an improvement over barbarism or philistinism in that the books themselves are at least preserved, Montesquieu is critical of the Christian mode of appropriation, which amounts to a sort of petrifaction: We recover, from time to time, a few pieces of these treasures. We have found works even in the tombs of their authors; and, what is nearly the same thing, we have found this one among the books of a Greek Bishop.

Christianity was perhaps especially intent on quarantining the literature of love. About our ostensible author, Montesquieu says that “all we can say of him is that he does not pre-date Sappho.” The reference seems to acknowledge Sappho as the founder of the lyric tradition. Like Socrates, who credits Diotima for his knowledge of erotics, Montesquieu acknowledges a female precursor. As for the translation, Montesquieu promises faithfulness, even at the sacrifice of beauty. Although he later describes the work as a depiction of “the most agreeable objects,” here he implies that the work’s purpose is not simply to entertain; rather, the “thought” is primary. After detailing the history of the manuscript and the duties of the translator, the preface shifts to the subject of audience reaction. Montesquieu sharply separates the appreciative “public” from the rejectionist “critics” and “savants:” Some savants have not discovered in it what they term art. It is simply not, they say, according to the rules. But if the work has pleased, you will prove that the heart has not expressed to them all the rules.

In stressing the heart over the head, Montesquieu defends the naïve and artless response of the untutored. His intended audience is the young: “I pray them [the critics] to leave the young men to judge of a book which, in whatever language it had been written, has certainly been made for them.” And yet, the young men he has in view are not unaffected country folk. “It is only the heads well-curled and well-powdered who understand all the merit of The Temple of Gnidus.” It is the wealthy and pampered young aristocrats in particular whom Montesquieu seeks to influence—and, of course, the ladies: “I desire with all my heart that this work may please them.” Courting young men and women of all ages, scorning the “grave” and the “gentlemen,” Montesquieu makes something of a show of his insouciance and iconoclasm.6 Most mocking is his final comment:

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

129

If the grave people desire of me some work less frivolous, I am in a state to satisfy them. For thirty years I have worked on a book of twelve pages which will contain all that we know of metaphysics, politics, and morals, and all that the great authors have forgotten in the volumes they have provided on those sciences.

In his Pensées, Montesquieu defended his work against those who regarded it as corrupting. His response to the moralists who denounced all fictions or who held the view that the only permissible fictions are edifying parables and fables reveals much about his understanding of the role of poetry: Some people have regarded the reading of The Temple of Gnidus as dangerous. But they do not realize that they are imputing to a single novel the fault of all. Whatever licentiousness there may be in a line of verse is the vice of the poet. But that the passions would be moved by it, that is the work of poetry. The reading of novels is without doubt dangerous. What is not? Would to God that one had to correct only the ill effects of reading novels! But to order a sentient being not to have sensations; to want to banish the passions, without even allowing one to reform them; to propose perfection to a century which is every day worse; among so much wickedness, to be indignant against weakness; I am afraid lest a morality so high become an abstraction, and lest in showing us so far from what we ought to be, we lose sight of what we are.7

The passage shows Montesquieu intensely aware of his audience and the corruption of their hearts. Reformation is a risky business. Like all novels, The Temple of Gnidus may be, as Rousseau said, a “poison,” but, unlike most, it is knowingly administered as part of a homeopathic course of treatment. Perhaps a dose of The Temple of Gnidus might inoculate one against more Dangerous Liaisons.

I The First Canto introduces us to the erotically animated world of Gnidus, the favorite earthly abode of Venus. The Gnidians are on such familiar terms with the goddess that “they no longer feel that sacred horror which the presence of the gods inspires.” Desire knows no boundaries, not even that between human and divine. It was at Gnidus that Venus fell in love with the mortal Adonis; it was at Gnidus that Amour fell victim to “all the mischiefs that he inflicts.” While divinity descends, mortals are elevated. Venus established the adoration of Adonis, and even ordinary mortals at Gnidus experience “those ravishments that the gods themselves feel only when they are in the celestial abode.” Other fundamental categories are easily conjoined here also: nature and art, the pleasant and the good, even nakedness and

130

Diana J. Schaub

modesty. Gnidus is a heaven on earth, a paradise where “the air conspires with sensual pleasure.” Whereas the spiritual heaven of religious tradition holds out the prospect of rest and contemplation, the sensual heaven of Gnidus offers variety, motion, and growth. The first thing we learn of Venus is her polymorphous possibilities. Although the Gnidians are accustomed to seeing her, she sometimes takes other forms and makes herself known via senses other than sight, thus preserving variety if not mystery. At Gnidus, variety is not the spice of life, but the staple. More protean than Venus is the river Cephus, an animistic version of that famous Heraclitean stream: when one of the nymphs bathes, the river Cephus is still more amorous; his waters wind about her; sometimes he rises the better to embrace her; he lifts her, he rushes on, he carries her away . . . he buoys her upon his waves, and, charmed by a burden so dear, he promenades her on his liquid plane. . . .

The land is as ardent as the water. So fertile is the soil of Gnidus that there is an “eternal springtime.” The cycles of nature are speeded up to the point that growth occurs seemingly without death and decay: “by a secret virtue, everything repairs itself in an instant.” At Gnidus, the fragile and momentary aspect of beauty is transcended. Curiously, the rapidity of regeneration might be such that it creates an impression of fixity or eternity. Yet one wonders: to really be Spring, mustn’t Spring be sprung from not-Spring? In the Persian Letters as well, Montesquieu speculated on the possibility of a hedonistic utopia. One letter (#125) considers the difficulty of conceiving of eternal paradise, inasmuch as “the nature of pleasures is to be of short duration.” Given the preference of the religious imagination for the unchanging, the paradise promised by most religions is a horrifyingly tedious prospect. But a paradise constructed on the shifting ground of desire is not without its problems, as Montesquieu revealed in his sketch of a heavenly harem (#141). Because pleasure is not a state but a process tied to a cycle of depletion and repletion, pleasure cannot succeed pleasure endlessly; there must be at least an instant of intervening pain. Pleasure seems to be unavoidably contaminated with its opposite. We are reminded of the painful and the ugly when we learn that the temple of Gnidus was built for Venus by Vulcan: “he labored for his unfaithful one, when he wished to make her forget the cruel affront that he caused her before the gods.” By using these familiar figures from mythology, Montesquieu is able, with great concision, to convey a wealth of insight into love’s complications. As legend has it, the laughter-loving goddess of beauty, born of sea-foam, was married to the pensive god of the forge, the only deformed immortal—ugly, lame, and ridiculous, but also an inspired craftsman, the workman of the gods. This marriage of nature

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

131

and art, water and fire, was unhappy from the beginning. Venus preferred the fiery temperament of Mars, god of war, to the laboring fires of the peace-loving, civic-minded Vulcan. Her infidelity was punished by Vulcan with the aid of his ingenious artistry. According to Montesquieu’s addendum to the story, Vulcan’s artistry might also be employed to assuage the humiliation of Venus and lay the foundation for a revived (and revised) worship of her.8 The structure of the temple, however, acknowledges the difficulty of love’s domestication, for there are separate chambers commemorating the marriage to Vulcan and the dalliance with Mars. In the marriage tableaux, the goddess’s demeanor is “expressive of pain,” and the scene is said to call to mind the rape of Persephone by Pluto. Pluto, remember, is the god of wealth and guardian of the metals that the techne of Vulcan transforms. His annual kidnapping of Persephone, maiden of the spring, brings winter to a sorrowing earth. Thus, even in Gnidus’s “eternal springtime” there are reminders of suffering, and reminders of the threat to eros posed by commerce and technology. The First Canto closes with a description of the Gnidian worship and how it differs from the “profanation” practiced elsewhere. Over most of the earth, eros is violated through various forms of the prostitution of women or the emasculation of men. At Gnidus, however, “the sacrifices are sighs, and the offerings a tender heart.” The altars are those “of Fidelity and Constancy.” This is not to say that the torments of love are absent; jealousy is permitted and fury is “placed in the rank of divine favors.” This giving of the heart entails a loss of mastery over self, a kind of enslavement and selfannihilation. The women of Gnidus, however, have something more in the way of self-possession, for “[t]he goddess inspires the maidens with modesty.” Modesty leads to a revaluation of feminine worth; Montesquieu says it “gives a new price to all the treasures that it conceals.” This modesty is not carried to extremes, however. It is not, for instance, a barrier to “sincere passion.” Like the men, the women of Gnidus eventually give themselves up to love: “The heart fixes itself forever in the moment at which it is obliged to surrender; but it is a profanation to surrender without loving.” Appropriately, Venus does not preside over the business of romance single-handedly. The god of love, Amour (alias Cupid), is active as well. Although Montesquieu speaks of fixed hearts and altars of fidelity and constancy, Amour’s activities among the Gnidians all involve the facilitation of change—heightening reciprocal love, mercifully ending unrequited love. We are, however, shown a deliberate and compassionate Amour who has laid aside his cruelest arrows and even his random mischief. Amour and Venus cooperate, with the god responsible for the pleasure of being in love, and the goddess for the good fortune of being found pleasing. Amour initiates, while Venus grants the victory. Once the narrator and his beloved

132

Diana J. Schaub

Themira are introduced, the final paragraph of the First Canto suggestively hints at the consummation of all this worship: perhaps I will be able to conduct her to the grove, where so many paths go to mingle; and when she shall have strayed. . . . Amour, who inspires me, forbids me from revealing his mysteries.

II In the Second Canto, we witness the judicial action of Venus, as she delivers oracles. Five supplicants appear, but only two are accounted worthy. Turned away are the coquette, the courtesan, and the rich man. Venus refuses homage from these three, for each represents a distinct and serious threat to love. The flirtatiousness of the coquette introduces falsehood and self-serving vanity. “What alarms did she not cause true lovers!” She is treated most harshly by Venus, being punished with the loss of her charms and the continuance of her coquetry. Thus, she is sentenced to perpetual rejection. The courtesan, by contrast, is simply sent away to ply her trade elsewhere. With her mercenary heart, she makes love despised. Next comes the rich man. Juxtaposed as he is to the courtesan, the suggestion seems to be that whereas women use beauty to acquire riches, men do the reverse. Both, however, are doomed to dissatisfaction. The rich man is told that purchased beauty disgusts and can never inspire love. The two worthy suitors make rather different requests—different from the unworthy, of course, but different also from one another. Aristeus, who has fallen madly in love with Camilla, asks that “he be able to love her more.” His focus is on loving rather than being loved. His selflessness redounds to his benefit, for what Venus grants him is Camilla herself. “I know your heart,” the goddess said to him: “you know how to love. I have found Camilla worthy of you: I would have been able to give her to the greatest king of the world; but the kings merit her less than the shepherds.”

Our narrator, who appears together with his beloved Themira, is the final petitioner. Unlike Aristeus, his requests all relate to her feelings rather than his own. He desires an exclusive possession, encompassing the mind, senses, and even unconscious life of his beloved: “grant that Themira thinks only of me, that she sees only me; that she awakes dreaming of me.” We glimpse love’s tyrannical aspirations.

III In the Third Canto, Venus shifts from one judgment seat to another. She presides over the sacred games—a sort of Olympiad of beauty, an antique

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

133

Miss Universe pageant. Like desire, beauty is no respecter of conventional boundaries; in this contest, “shepherdesses are confounded with the daughters of kings.” Although beauty transcends political divisions, that is not to say that beauty is unconnected with or uninfluenced by political life. Helen, cause of the Trojan War, is singled out as a three-time winner of the prize, reminding us that the contests of men and nations are often of erotic origin. The dates of Helen’s triumphs coincide with the acts of violence her beauty provoked: she triumphed when Theseus had ravished her; she triumphed when she had been kidnapped by the son of Priam; and she triumphed again, when the gods had restored her to Menelaus, after ten years of hope. Beauty is politicized in other ways also. Although the empire of beauty is universal (“There is not a country in the universe, where a beauty does not receive homage”), beauty is subject to a measure of societal definition or particularization: The gods have divided beauty among the nations, as nature has divided it among the goddesses. There, one sees the proud beauty of Pallas; here, the grandeur and majesty of Juno; further, the simplicity of Diana, the delicacy of Thetis, the charm of the Graces, and sometimes the smile of Venus.

Accordingly, the contestants enter by country, rather than as individuals. We are treated to a survey of beauty’s variety, and equally significant, modesty’s variety. As so often in his writing, Montesquieu is interested in the articulation of the universal and the particular in human affairs. Competing in the present contest are contingents of women from fifteen different nations. Montesquieu gives a very brief description of each contingent, which reveals some essential feature of the nation’s way of life or general spirit. Some prize youth (the thirteen-year-olds from Salamis), some luxury (the Babylonians with their “robes of purple embroidered with gold”), some bodily perfection (the women of Miletus). Some of the women are noted for their cosmopolitan adornment, like the women of Tyre, a trading people, others for their natural endowments, like the women of Corinth, “whose hair fell in thick ringlets.” Particularly interesting is the juxtaposition of the Cyprians and Spartans, both of whom are singled out for their attitude toward modesty. The Cyprian women are free with their charms, shamelessly scorning “a modesty which is continually alarmed.” By contrast, the Spartan women are prudish, insisting that they “would never violate modesty but for love of country.” Oddly though, “their robes were open at the sides, from the girdle, in the most immodest manner.” The de-eroticization of life affected by Sparta’s inordinate patriotism seems to have deprived modesty of charm and immodesty of meaning. Most amusing are the women of Lesbos, who lack the proper competitive spirit and spend their time complimenting one another.

134

Diana J. Schaub

A few of the Asiatic contingents are chaperoned by men, and in one case, that of the Indian queen and her daughters, by eunuchs. The queen of Lydia, for example, is joined by her husband, Candaules. Those familiar with Herodotus (a familiarity Montesquieu simply assumes) will remember that Candaules was so enamored of his wife’s beauty that he forced his lieutenant Gyges to look upon her naked. Outraged, she in turn forced Gyges to kill Candaules.9 Already, the ill-fated Candaules gives evidence of a questionable desire to exhibit his wife to the gaze of others: “Alas!” he said, “I am happy; but it is a thing which is known only to Venus and myself: my happiness would be greater, if it occasioned envy! Beautiful queen, quit these vain ornaments; drop that irksome linen; show yourself to the universe.”

The speech of the uxorious Egyptian husbands, who also accompany their wives, is quite different. Whereas Candaules wishes to publicize his private enjoyments (not in order to share them, but to arouse envy), the Egyptian men are intent on preserving the integrity of private life. They caution: “Be less sensible of the glory you acquire at Gnidus, than of the homage that you can find in your home.” These are not the words of autocratic husbands seeking to keep their wives under lock and key, however. In fact, among the Egyptians, the sexes have reversed roles; men are the homebodies and are subordinated to women by law. The passage above goes on to speak of “a tranquil husband, who, while you are occupied with external affairs, ought to await, in the bosom of your family, the heart that you bring back to him.” The men of Egypt are doubly subject to women—conventionally, through the laws in honor of the goddess Isis, and naturally, through the empire of beauty. By their own account, they are “the happiest slaves in the universe.” In the Pensées, Montesquieu speculated on the effect of women acquiring civic authority. His verdict was that “women have scarcely ever pretended to equality: for they already have so many other natural advantages, that equal power ever constitutes empire for them.”10 Unlike Rousseau, who thought the agitation for sexual equality would entail the loss of women’s actual, albeit indirect, empire in the realm of morals, Montesquieu sees social and political equality as augmenting (perhaps unfairly) their already considerable position. Last to enter are the Gnidian women, “beauties without ornaments,” notable for their simplicity and grace. Not all the women enter the lists, however. The lovely Camilla abstains, saying “it is enough for me that my dear Aristeus finds me beautiful.” Earlier in this canto, Montesquieu had said that “only the greatest homage can appease the ambition of a beauty.” Apparently, Camilla has beauty without the ambition of a beauty. Or perhaps the greatest homage, properly understood, is in the eye of the lover. Either

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

135

way, it seems that Camilla, like Aristeus, seeks nothing for herself. Her love is sufficient unto itself. Themira on the other hand, like our narrator, is more ambitious. Themira competes and, of course, wins.

IV The Fourth Canto brings together Aristeus and our narrator, each wandering in “a solitary wood,” while the women are involved in some communal worship. Although they are comparative strangers, having seen one another only once before, they greet each other as dear friends. Love brings friendship in its train; for lovers, when not with one another, love to talk of love. Among modern philosophers, treatments of friendship are noticeably scarce. From having been closely tied to the activity of philosophy, friendship in its higher forms disappears from philosophic consideration. (In its political bearing, friendship is reduced to conspiracy and confederation.) Thus, it is cheering to see mention of friendship. Although this new religion of love revives friendship, it is friendship of a certain sort, what we might call confessional friendship. Friendship becomes strictly ancillary to romance—every lover needs a confidant. The narrator tells his story first. Through the erotic odyssey he recounts, Montesquieu explores the customs of a number of nations. Whereas the Second Canto highlighted certain universal problems (the sullying of love when vanity and money intervene), the Third and Fourth Cantos both document societal-specific sexual mores. The diversity celebrated in the Third Canto is judged more severely in this one. Four nations in particular are singled out for rebuke: Sybaris, Crete, Lesbos, and Lemnia. The most thoroughly treated is Sybaris—reminiscent of Paris both in name and deed. The narrator is, by birth, a Sybarite, but from a young age he “had disgust for unhappy Sybaris.” Reason, virtue, and religion all concurred to condemn the practices of his native land. At Sybaris, the distinction between luxury and necessity no longer exists; ever new pleasures and diversions have become necessity. Unlike Gnidus, where the fertility of the soil did not disturb the simplicity of the inhabitants, at Sybaris, “eternal abundance” contributes to indolence and indulgence. The Sybarites are given over to sensuality. Interestingly, the sexual license of Sybaris has led to a certain sexual homogenization: The men are so effeminate, their attire is so like that of the women; they compose their complexions so well, they curl their hair with so much art; they spend so much time in correcting themselves at the mirror, that it seems there is only one sex in all the city.

136

Diana J. Schaub

If the men have acquired a “feminine” attitude toward the presentation of their bodies, the women have acquired a “masculine” attitude toward the use of theirs for “they are occupied only with what is so falsely called enjoyment.” With the advent of male vanity and female promiscuity, there has been an abandonment of the respective roles of “attack” and “defense.” Modesty is unknown and, as a result, the intercourse of bodies is simply that: “favors have there only their own reality.” The pleasures of courtship, the heightening of anticipation, the idealization of love, and all that derives from the activity of the imagination are missing from Sybaris. Paradoxically, the quest for pleasure has culminated in a coarsening, rather than a refinement, of sensibility—and pervasive dissatisfaction as well. The obsession with taste culminates in distaste as “their souls, incapable of feeling pleasures, seem to have no delicacy but for pain.” This neurasthenia has rendered the Sybarites politically apathetic and unfit for self-government. Montesquieu, ever interested in the influence of domestic life upon political life, concludes that “incapable of bearing the weight of arms, timid in the face of their fellow citizens, cowards in the face of strangers, they are slaves all ready for the first master.” In quest of a worship more pure, the narrator sets to sea, and arrives at Crete. But instead of purity, the narrator finds primitivism. Here, the fury of love has left its mark. The names of Daedalus, Pasiphaë, Phaedra, Ariadne, and Idomeneus call to mind those ancient tales of accursed families and the horrors of bestiality, human sacrifice, incest, abandonment, and murder. Clearly, there are things worse than the hyper-sophistication and ennui of Sybaris. Leaving Crete, the narrator travels to Lesbos, where Venus has played cruel tricks: “she has taken modesty away from the countenances of the women, weakness away from their bodies, and timidity away from their souls.” Despite the narrator’s harsh judgment on this departure from “human nature,” his admiration for Sappho continues. He speaks of the “tender Sappho . . . [i]mmortal as the Muses.” His attitude is one of pity more than condemnation for “this unfortunate maiden burns with a fire that she cannot extinguish. Odious to herself, bored by her charms, she hates her sex, and quests for it always.” Interestingly, Montesquieu explains lesbianism as a form of self-hatred, rooted in misogyny not misandry. Next comes the island of Lemnos, where according to legend, the women—true misandrists—killed all the men. Montesquieu, however, does not refer directly to their deed. Instead, he stresses the state of their hearts. The Lemnian crime is that of scorning love altogether: “Venus has no temple there: the Lemnians never address her with vows. ‘We reject,’ they say, ‘a worship which softens hearts.’” On this tour of profanations, we have moved from “women who love pleasure” (the Sybarites) to “women whom love drives crazy” (the Cretans)

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

137

to “women who love women” (the Lesbians) to “women who refuse to love” (the Lemnians). After all these indecencies, the narrator finally reaches the sacred isle of Delos. According to legend, Delos gained renown as a place of sanctuary when it received the unwed and pregnant Leto, deserted by Zeus and soon to give birth to Apollo and Artemis (Diana). The hospitality of the inhabitants caused this barren, rocky, storm-tossed outcropping to be transformed into “the heaven-built isle.”11 Our narrator remains some months among the Delians, despite his intuition (which he explains as a “remembrance of the future”) that his destiny lies elsewhere. Finally, one of the Graces appears to him in a vision and directs him to leave Delos for the even more sacred Gnidus. The atmosphere on Gnidus is love-drenched. From his first breath, the narrator is overcome by longing. As he explains it, “I did not love yet, but I sought to love.” In a sense, he is in love with the shepherdess Themira before his first glimpse of her, rather like Rousseau’s Emile and his Sophie. If the narrator’s travels have shown him what his beloved is not, his dream has shown him something of what she might be: A secret charm was diffused over her whole person: she was not as beautiful as Venus, but she was as ravishing; all her features were not regular, but altogether they enchanted: you would not find there what is admired, but what stimulates; her hair fell negligently on her shoulders, but this negligence was happy; her figure was charming; she had that air that nature alone gives, and the secret of which she hides from painters themselves.

Intriguingly, throughout The Temple of Gnidus, places and persons associated with Apollo are surpassed by Venus. In the Second Canto, the oracular cave at Gnidus was contrasted to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi: The earth does not moan underfoot; the hair does not stand erect on the head; there is no priestess, as at Delphi, where Apollo agitates the Pythia: rather Venus herself listens to mortals, without making sport of their hopes or their fears.

Although Apollo is the god of light and truth, Montesquieu implies that his worship was infected by obscurantism. The religion of love does not depend on such mystifications. The worship at Gnidus, perhaps because it stems from real needs, is superior to the worship at Delphi and Delos. In the Third Canto, the virgin goddess Diana, twin sister of Apollo, also received something of a comeuppance: “I saw Diana alone, she was as beautiful as Venus: I saw her with Venus, she was no more than Diana.” Indeed, although “goddesses never compare themselves to mortals,” it seems that Themira might give all the goddesses but Venus a moment’s worry. Finally, the Graces, who were traditionally the companions of Apollo, now harken

138

Diana J. Schaub

to Venus; and poetic inspiration comes from Amour rather than from the Muses, also traditionally companions of Apollo. Even as Montesquieu breathes life into ancient eros, he hints at the need for a new conception of love, one centered more forthrightly on women as worthy objects of longing. Among the Greeks, those goddesses most revered were the virgin warriors and huntresses like Athena (sprung from the head of Zeus) and Artemis (twin of Apollo). Aphrodite, on the other hand, cuts a distinctly poor figure whether one looks to Homer, poet of battle, or Plato, poet of love (Aphrodite is scarcely present in the Symposium). To signal his departure from the Greek sensibility,12 and hint at the increased importance of women (a phenomenon perhaps attributable to Christianity), Montesquieu uses the Latin names of the Olympians, although this is supposedly a Greek manuscript. He writes of Venus rather than Aphrodite, Diana rather than Artemis, Bacchus rather than Dionysus, and in the case of the god of love, he uses the French “L’Amour” rather than the Greek “Eros” or Latin “Cupid,” finding the former perhaps too metaphysical, the latter perhaps too frivolous. Montesquieu’s appropriation and revaluation of the Greek outlook is visible also in his female protagonists: Themira and Camilla. Themira is named for the Greek goddess Themis, whose name means “steadfast” and who was originally associated with Gaea, goddess of the earth. As her worship evolved, Themira became associated with rooted customs and long-established law, until finally she became abstract Justice or Righteousness seated by the side of Zeus. She was the guardian of oaths and the mother of the Horae, goddesses of the seasons. Like their mother, the seasons were connected both with fertility and politics. In Hesiod, for instance, the seasons are named Eunomia (Good Government), Dike (Right), and Eirene (Peace).13 In Montesquieu’s story, Venus gives the prize for beauty not to a troublemaker like Helen, but to the steadfast Themira. In judging as she does, Venus gives evidence of her own reformation and domestication. The correction that Montesquieu suggests is twofold. Eros must be brought into harmony with law, while law, which has a tendency to become a concept abstract and remote, must be brought back to its earthy origins. Through the simple shepherdess Themira, Montesquieu implies that there is a natural standard for justice and good government. The point is similar to that made in the disquisition on population in the Persian Letters (#113–22) where Montesquieu argues that the fecundity and healthfulness of individuals is a marker of good government. Camilla also is a legendary figure from antiquity. Virgil tells of how her exiled father saved the life of his infant daughter by binding her to a battlespear, pledging her life to the service of the virgin huntress Diana, and heaving her across a raging torrent to safety. She grew up city-less, nursed by a wild mare and clothed in tiger skins: “The girl remained untouched and

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

139

ever cherished passion for arms and for virginity.”14 In The Aeneid, she appears at the head of the Volscians, leading a troupe of women warriors, “virgins all,” against Aeneus’s Trojans.15 She is a terror on the battlefield: “for every javelin she twirled and cast a Phrygian trooper fell.”16 Camilla, “this dire scourge of battle,” dies by a “whistling shaft . . . thudded home beneath her naked breast.”17 Montesquieu’s Camilla is considerably tamed. Like her namesake, she is high-born. We are told in the Fifth Canto that she is “the daughter of one of the principal inhabitants of Gnidus.” And like her namesake, she scorns the female practice of adornment, has no interest in beauty contests, and can be both serious and sensible when the occasion demands. She is also virginal. Her purity, however, does not arise from indifference to men and devotion to masculine pursuits. Montesquieu’s maiden finds her happiness in loving and being loved. Her chastity is not a life-time commitment. The maiden’s vow will give way to a marital vow. Just as Venus and her followers must be properly domesticated (as demonstrated by the movement from Helen to Themira), so too Diana and her disciples must renounce their savage ways (as seen in the transfigured Camilla). Montesquieu aims to create a new model of womanhood.

V In the Fifth Canto, we are given the sentimental history of Aristeus. Once again, certain differences are visible between the two pairs. It is as if the narrator and Themira serve as a bridge to the purer, simpler love of Aristeus and Camilla. Unlike the narrator’s more worldly education, the adventures of Aristeus “are only the sentiments of a tender heart.” He claims that his love for Camilla “constitutes the whole history of my life.” Camilla is of course beautiful, but her air is modest and naïve. In the Third Canto, we learned of her unwillingness to contend with other women for the reputation of beauty. It comes as no surprise to learn that her cosmetic impulse is likewise considerably attenuated: “Camilla does not seek to adorn herself; yet she is better adorned than the other women.” She is herself a cosmos, displaying the same harmony of parts. Her charms are artless and unselfconscious; they are “invisible charms suitable for tyranny over hearts.” Of equal importance is her “spirit” (a word of great significance to Montesquieu in all his writings). “She has a spirit that nature almost always refuses to beauties,” being fitted for serious pursuits as well as enjoyment, in accord with her partner’s preferences. Through all her adaptations, however, she retains her essential simplicity. In her “you find always a naive shepherdess.” The courtship of Aristeus and Camilla is both more elaborate and more elaborated on than that of the narrator and Themira. Whereas the narrator’s

140

Diana J. Schaub

account stopped with the onset of love, Aristeus discloses its subsequent course. Aristeus’s love for Camilla is as immediate as the narrator’s for Themira, but his awe of Camilla keeps him at a distance. He fears not meriting her to the extent that he strives to forget her. Unable to accomplish this, Aristeus finally declares his love. He offers testimony to love’s transformative powers: I loved the noise of the world, and I seek solitude; I had some views of ambition, and I desire only your presence; I wanted to wander about in remote climates, and my heart is now a citizen only of the places where you breathe: all that which is not you has vanished from before my eyes.

Reading a passage such as this, one has to wonder to what extent romantic love and patriotism are compatible. Is Aristeus any better suited to citizenship than the corrupt Sybarites? Clearly, love is marked by extreme insularity. As John Donne so crisply put it, She’s all states, and all princes I; Nothing else is.18

Love desires to talk only of itself. Thus, Camilla rejects Aristeus’s news of the outside world: “‘What do you sustain me with?’ she says to me; ‘speak to me of our love.’” Lovers have a very high tolerance for repetition, even pretending not to believe expressions of love in order to hear the wonderful words again. Even more than words, though, lovers love silence: “shortly that gentle silence reigns between us which is the most tender language of lovers.” Interestingly, Aristeus emphasizes the melancholy and languor that is the lover’s lot, saying, “I feel my tears flow, and I know not why.” Whatever its cause, the sadness of lovers is said to be “delicious.” Given over to the transports of love, Aristeus manifests the loss of self that love was earlier said to entail: When I catch sight of her from afar, my spirit loses its way: she approaches, and my heart is agitated: I arrive near her, and it seems that my soul wants to quit me, that this soul is with Camilla, and that she is going to animate it.

Aristeus is all desire, even desiring Camilla to love him to a fault. Camilla, however, cannot countenance the “fault” he alludes to. She is divided between duty and desire: “Embattled by her modesty and her love, she would like to refuse me all, she would like to be able to grant me all.” The resistance of his beloved leads Aristeus to pledge his undying love, or more precisely, to tie his love to his very life. Should he cease to love Camilla, he will cease to live. The canto ends with a lapse into silence, as Aristeus breaks off his recital and slips into a private reverie. This silence between the friends

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

141

seems to differ from the “gentle silence” of lovers, for the conversation of the two friends has not affected a true union. They have been conducted on a parallel course, rather than an intercourse.

VI Musing on leading their partners astray, the narrator and Aristeus themselves go astray: “we were conducted, by a path of flowers, to the foot of a frightful crag.” There they enter into the abode of somber Jealousy (companioned by Pallor, Sadness, Silence, and the Anxieties) and frightful Fury. Although the First Canto had made clear that jealousy and fury existed on Gnidus, the impression was one of a certain moderation. We were told, for instance, that “Jealousy is a passion which is permitted, but which ought to be kept to oneself.” Further, in the Second Canto we were told that a visit to Venus’s “sacred cavern” did not cause one’s hair to stand on end. One of the first things we learn about this “obscure cavern” is that it does set the hair on end. Far from turning away, however, the young men are drawn on: “Friend,” I cried, “let us enter deeper, let us see if we can augment our pains.” Love is not without a masochistic side (and if anything friendship encourages this tendency): We abandoned ourselves to our transports; one hundred times we made the circuit of this dreadful cavern: we went from Jealousy to Fury, and from Fury to Jealousy: we cried, “Themira!” we cried, “Camilla!” If Themira or Camilla had come, we would have torn them to pieces with our own hands.

As the self-torture of jealousy turns outward in fury, sadism succeeds masochism. Aristeus and the narrator have become like maenads ready to destroy their beloveds. These heroes of pastoral love conceive a hatred for the pastoral, determining to “exterminate the flocks” and “pursue these shepherds whose loves are so peaceful.” In their fury, they even resolve to attack the temple of the god responsible for their fate. It is Bacchus who restores them to reason. Montesquieu, as befits a vintner, reverses the usual Dionysian progression. Although he admits that wine can lead men astray, he places more emphasis on its salutary effects. One intoxication can counter another, allowing the soul to regain its equilibrium. Ariadne, described in the Fourth Canto as “disconsolate in the deserts,” a victim of love’s fury, is now shown on the arm of Bacchus, god of joy. According to Ariadne, the fullness of enjoyment belongs only to the gods. Among humans, desire always outstrips enjoyment—hence the need for the balm of insensibility offered by Bacchus. Pretty quickly, however, these consolations can become their own form of “disorder.” The troupe of

142

Diana J. Schaub

bacchanals who appears has faces “besmeared with lees,” and Silenus is more disordered yet, “mounted on his ass: his head seemed to seek the earth.” Reason is upended. “Seized by the frenzies of Silenus and the transports of the bacchanals,” Aristeus and the narrator join in the revelry.

VII In the Seventh Canto, we see that the reprieve offered by Bacchus has been but temporary. The experience of the two friends is pretty near that of A. E. Housman’s “Terence”: Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried halfway home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heighho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew.19

Returning to their “suspicions and inquietudes,” they now go in search of Themira and Camilla, “those powerful objects of our love and of our jealousy.” Along the way, the two friends engage in a sort of contest of jealousy, in which they trade fears about, and accusations against, their beloveds. This groundless jealousy, however, quickly disperses in the moment of reunion with their loves. Interestingly, we learn that Themira’s response to her lover’s three-day absence was quite different in that she was concerned for his safety. Her visit was to Venus’s “sacred cavern” rather than Jealousy’s “obscure cavern”: “I did not ask whether you loved me; alas! I wanted only to know whether you still lived.” Throughout The Temple of Gnidus it is males who experience jealousy. Both Vulcan and Mars were shown to be afflicted by it; indeed, the temple itself was Vulcan’s apology to Venus for his (not unjustifiable) jealousy. Montesquieu seems to be suggesting that there is some disproportion of desire or power between men and women. Women have beauty and the empire that goes with it. Men desire to possess these beauties, but their possession is plagued by uncertainty. Male jealousy is a function of fear.

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

143

To make amends for his doubt of her, the narrator recommends they walk together in “a solitary wood.” The activities on Gnidus are of two sorts, those that occur in the temple and its public environs (from declarations of love to the contest of beauty), and those that occur in “solitary woods.” The woods are not strictly speaking “solitary;” rather, they are the site of the private congress of both friends and lovers. The true inner sanctum of this religion of love is not in the temple, but in the bowers of nature. The narrator’s suggested form of expiation quite conveniently furthers his quest for possession. For a moment, it seems that the story will culminate with the seduction scene that had been alluded to at the conclusion of the First Canto. Here was the narrator’s fantasy (abruptly censored though it was): perhaps I will be able to conduct her to the grove, where so many paths go to mingle; and when she shall have strayed. . . . Amour, who inspires me, forbids me from revealing his mysteries.

Here, in the last paragraphs of The Temple of Gnidus, is what happens: Where do you think I found Amour? I found him on the lips of Themira; I found him next on her bosom; he saved himself at her feet: I found him yet again; he hid under her knees; I followed him; and I would have followed him forever, if Themira all in tears, Themira irritated, had not stopped me. He was at his last retreat: she is so charming that he could not quit her. . . . Unhappy as I am! Themira listened to my complaints, and she was not softened by them: she heard my prayers, and she became more severe. At last, I grew rash; she was indignant: I trembled; she appeared sorry: I cried; she rebuffed me: I fell; and I felt that my sighs would have been my last sighs, if Themira had not placed a hand on my heart, and restored the life within. —“No,” she said, “I am not so cruel as you; for I have never wanted to make you die, and you want to draw me into the night of the tomb. “Open your dying eyes, if you do not want mine to close forever.” She embraced me: I received my pardon, alas! without hope of becoming guilty.

Themira does not stray. The mysteries spoken of in the First Canto are still intact. At no point in this work does Montesquieu overtly moralize on the need for modesty; instead he makes the case for modesty on hedonistic grounds. Having learned of the unhappiness of the Sybarites back in the Fourth Canto, it comes as no surprise that a satyr and a nymph, encountered by the lovers during their perambulations, both envy them the tenderness of their love. By illustrating the pleasures of anticipation, Montesquieu tries to make modesty sexy again.

144

Diana J. Schaub

EPILOGUE Appended to The Temple of Gnidus is a second, very short tale, entitled “Cephisa and Amour,” which Montesquieu introduces by reassuming his guise of translator: “As the following piece appears to me to be by the same author, I have thought it right to translate it and place it here.” One wonders what the relationship between the two stories is. Why do we need this supplement? The story opens with a narrator and his beloved, Cephisa, wandering in the woods—a scene we’ve become pretty familiar with. They come upon Amour alone and asleep. While the narrator contemplates stealing the arms of Amour, Cephisa acts, first wounding her lover with the sleeping god’s amorous darts, and then turning her attention to Amour himself. She proposes binding him, but is dissuaded from this plan by the narrator. Shooting him is likewise countermanded. On her own, Cephisa then buries Amour under a pile of leaves and conceives the audacious plan to clip his wings “so that there will no longer be inconstant men on the earth.” In the first story, female beauty, particularly when coupled with modesty, seemed to give women the upper hand in relations between the sexes. Cephisa, however, seems greatly to resent love’s power and his mischievous independence. She strikes out against male irresponsibility. To the horror of the narrator, she performs a castration of sorts. In a scene rife with incestuous undertones, Amour recovers on his mother’s breast in the Temple of Gnidus. The heat of her bosom causes the tips of his wings to lengthen and regenerate. Venus restores her son to potency (and flightiness): “at last he rose into the air, whence he reigns over all nature.” Amour revenges himself by making Cephisa “the most inconstant of all the Beauties.” The inconstancy natural to men is a punishment for a woman. One final clue about the meaning of the two stories is provided by the manuscript’s publication history. The work appeared during Holy Week and offered its readers a very different sort of spectacle than the paschal one then being enacted in the streets of French towns. As a fabulist, Montesquieu is adept at appropriating religious symbolism. In the harem of the Persian Letters, he created a sexualized version of the kingdom of God—a jealous lord who demands obedience and love, his priestly intermediaries (the eunuchs), and a community of devoted (or as it turns out, not so devoted) female believers. In addition to the overall sexual-religious parallelism that characterizes that work, there are specific letters that contain parodies or travesties of Biblical stories. One can discern a similar technique in The Temple of Gnidus, particularly its postscript. There, the god of love is found alone in a garden, temporarily deserted by his disciples. To contain his power over men, he is persecuted and buried. Assisted by a divine parent, he rises and ascends into heaven, “whence he reigns over all nature,”

The Education of the Sentiments in Montesquieu’s The Temple of Gnidus

145

with power to judge and punish. Stripped to its essential lines, the story appears as a comic and highly sacrilegious retelling of the death and resurrection of Christ. Montesquieu terrestrialized the religion of love.

NOTES 1. Allan Bloom, “Introduction,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 6, 21. 2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France (Penguin, 1979), 69. 3. Rousseau, Reveries, 70. 4. Rousseau, Reveries, 73. 5. The translation of The Temple of Gnidus is my own, based on the text contained in the Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres complètes, ed. Roger Caillois (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1949–1951), vol. I. No page citations will be given. As the work itself is under thirty pages in length and is divided into a preface, seven cantos, and an epilogue, it is relatively easy to keep one’s bearings. 6. The “Introduction” to the Persian Letters is remarkably similar in tone and topics. It displays the same interest in “the public taste” and the same dismissal of the ponderous critics. With the Persian Letters, however, the “translator” adopted a more liberal policy—in deference to the public taste, deleting “a countless number of sublime expressions which would have been supremely boring.” 7. Montesquieu, Mes Pensées, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. I, no. 89. 8. Revealingly, Montesquieu compares himself to Vulcan in the epigraph to The Spirit of the Laws. 9. Herodotus, The History, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), I.7–12. 10. Montesquieu, Mes Pensées, no. 581. 11. Edith Hamilton, Mythology (New York: New American Library, 1969), 294. 12. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu makes clear that male homoeroticism was the Greek ideal. In a chapter entitled “On the condition of women in the various governments” (book VII, chapter 9) he says, in the Greek towns where a blind vice reigned unbridled, where love took only a form one dare not mention while only friendship was to be found within marriages, women’s virtue, simplicity, and chastity were such that one has scarcely ever seen a people who had a better police in this regard.

Montesquieu’s footnote to this passage reads: “’As for true love,’ says Plutarch in the Moralia, Amatorius, p. 600, ‘women have no part in it.’ He spoke as did his age. See Xenophon, in the dialog entitled Hiero.” Women were virtuous among the Greeks because they were not the primary object of male desire. Marriage was for the utilitarian purpose of procreation. According to Montesquieu, the prevalence of homosexuality among the Greeks, and particularly its pedophilic character, followed from the Greek understanding of freedom (see book IV, chapter 8, “Explanation of a paradox of the ancients in relation to mores”). It would be as disgraceful for a free man

146

Diana J. Schaub

to love a woman as a slave, so long as women are little more than slaves; much better to love a boy who is destined for public affairs and is with respect to beardless beauty the equivalent of a woman. Montesquieu indicates that homosexuality is one of the “singular” institutions of the Greeks—an institution intimately connected with hostility to commerce and the inequality of women. In The Temple of Gnidus, Montesquieu makes no reference to male homosexuality. It is beyond the pale, unlike Sappho and her devotees who are at least, as the current phrase has it, “woman-centered.” 13. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), s.v. “Themis” and “Horae.” 14. Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990), bk. XI, lines 795–96. 15. Virgil, The Aeneid, bk. XI, line 890. 16. Virgil, The Aeneid, bk. XI, lines 919–20. 17. Virgil, The Aeneid, bk. XI, lines 1080, 1092–95. 18. John Donne, “The Sun Rising,” in The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (New York: Penguin, 1983), 80. 19. A. E. Housman, The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 89.

II CONVERSATIONS WITH MACHIAVELLI

7 How Machiavellian Is Cicero? David S. Fott

In three significant respects Niccolò Machiavelli’s attack on premodern political thought appears to include Marcus Tullius Cicero in its scope. First, Machiavelli targets those thinkers who “have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth” (Prince, 15.61).1 Cicero’s On the Republic is usually said to describe an ideal republic, supported by a sanitized account of Roman history and an explicit reliance on natural law. Second, Machiavelli says that he imparts the fruits of his learning with practical needs in view: his “intent is to write something useful” that will “go directly to the effectual truth of the thing” (Prince, 15.61). Cicero calls himself an Academic, a member of a school that searches for probability because truth is obscure; yet he advocates some moral views based on Stoicism, a teleological philosophy according to which a thing is measured by its excellence, not its effect. Third, Machiavelli teaches a prince, “if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity” (Prince, 15.61). Cicero appears to teach that what is advantageous can never conflict with what is honorable. It is tempting to say that on the big points Cicero is an entirely antiMachiavellian philosopher. The full account is more complicated, however. The three points mentioned above will form the framework for a more complete explanation.

REPUBLICS AND THEIR LEADERS According to Machiavelli, “All states . . . have been and are either republics [republica] or principalities” (Prince, 1.5). Since he discusses many 149

150

David S. Fott

principalities in The Prince, which have in common only that one man ruled each one, it would be easy to say that Machiavelli considers a republic to be a form of government in which one man is not in charge. In that respect Cicero’s definition—offered by the consul and military leader Scipio Aemilianus, the leading character in his dialogue On the Republic—would be more inclusive: “[A] republic [res publica] is the thing [res] of a people [populus]; however, a people is not any assemblage of men herded together in whatever mode, but an assemblage of a multitude united in agreement about right and in the sharing of advantage” (Rep., 1.39).2 Cicero’s definition encompasses regimes ruled by one man, as well as those ruled by the few and by the many (Rep., 1.41–42). Cicero’s definition is also honorific: later it becomes clear that by “united in agreement about right and in the sharing of advantage” he does not mean to include a multitude united by a depraved view of justice (see, for example, Rep., 3.35–36). Machiavelli’s definition makes no mention of, or demands on, the character of the people involved in the republic; he does not restrict usage of “republic” to peoples who harmoniously pursue right or justice. In fact he sees the disturbances among the Romans in the early fifth century BCE, which led to the creation of the office of tribune to protect the rights of the plebeians, as a step toward Rome’s freedom and power.3 Machiavelli does offer praise to republics that he does not allow principalities. First, he makes the partly negative claim that the “common good is not observed if not in republics, since all that is for that purpose is executed” (Discourses, 2.2.130).4 It does not follow, however, that the common good is found in republics. Harvey Mansfield remarks that “within republics the common good means in effect the good only of the majority, since justice to all is impossible.”5 Justice to all is impossible because there will be winners and losers in the inevitable, partisan political battles. Second, Machiavelli allows that “a republic has greater life and has good fortune longer than a principality, for it can accommodate itself better than one prince can to the diversity of times through the diversity of the citizens that are in it” (Discourses, 3.9.240). This diversity of citizens consists partly of what Machiavelli refers to more than once as the presence of “princes” in a republic. Rome benefited from a long line of such princes serving as consuls (Discourses, 1.12.37, 1.20.54; the mention of Rome is in the latter location). But if republics have princes we must revise our earlier definition of a republic for Machiavelli, because it incorporated a sharp separation from a principality. This revision would also challenge the statement that Cicero’s definition of republic is more inclusive because it makes room for monarchs. More fundamental for Machiavelli than the distinction between kinds of states is the distinction between “two diverse humors”: “the people desire neither to be commanded nor op-

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

151

pressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people” (Prince, 9.39; see also Dedicatory Letter and Discourses, 1.4–5).6 Princes want to command, and republics need princes. A republic bent on expansion, such as Rome, will last much longer than one content to maintain itself, such as Sparta or Venice, since all human things are constantly either rising or falling (Discourses, 1.6). So that a republic may not fall because of corruption, it needs to be reordered; for that purpose a prince is needed to use “extraordinary” means, such as “violence and arms”—extra-legal or illegal means that the people is unwilling to use because of its humor (Discourses, 1.18.51). As the Roman republic waxed, it dealt with dangers by “giving power to one man who could decide without any consultation and execute his decisions without any appeal” (Discourses, 1.33.71). The difference between Machiavelli’s and Cicero’s accounts of the Roman dictatorship, as Mansfield points out, is that Cicero seeks to limit the dictator alternately by giving a legal declaration of his powers (in case of more serious “war or discord,” Cicero writes, one man would have consular power “for no more than six months, if the senate determines” [Leg., 3.9]), and by comparing him to a king. As Mansfield puts it, “Cicero maintains the fiction, for it must be at least in part fiction, that the dictator continues, even embodies, the rule of reason under the principle of kingship and the examples of experts.”7 Cicero was thus one of a number of ancient writers who “recoiled from the opportunity to conceive—even when the fact was there to be exploited—a robust executive power exempt from the law and unbounded by the need to deliberate or consult.”8 Related to that difference is the difference between Cicero’s and Machiavelli’s advice to rulers concerning whether it is safer to rule through fear or love.9 Machiavelli advocates the former, because people’s love for a prince lasts only as long as his utility, while “fear is held by a dread of punishment that never forsakes you” (Prince, 17.67). In On Duties Cicero favors ruling through love, because “fear is a bad guardian over a long duration, but goodwill is forever steadfast” (Off., 2.23). Cicero draws this conclusion through the words of the poet Quintus Ennius: “Whom they fear, they hate. Whom everyone hates, everyone hopes to see dead” (Off., 2.23).10 By contrast Machiavelli distinguishes between fear and hatred (Prince, chaps. 17, 19). Lest the reader extrapolate from those contrasts to a general thesis about the lack of realism in Cicero’s political thought, for the most part Cicero’s main work of political philosophy praises the constitution of the actual Roman republic, not an idealized one. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word “ideal” means, as a noun, “[a] conception of something, or a thing conceived, in its highest perfection, or as an object to be realized or aimed at; a perfect type; a standard of perfection or excellence”; “[s]omething existing only as a mental conception; an imaginary thing.”11 It was

152

David S. Fott

adopted from the French idéal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the meanings given for “ideal” as an adjective is “[e]xisting as an idea or archetype; relating to or consisting of ideas (in the Platonic sense).” Cicero is familiar with the theory of ideas presented in Plato’s Republic; but it does not follow that we should translate his language with a word colored by an ancient theory that he (and even Plato himself) may not accept. J. G. F. Powell remarks, “The word that is often translated as ‘ideal’ . . . is, in fact, optimus, ‘best.’ See, for example, Keyes’s Loeb translation [of Cicero’s On the Republic] at 1.70 (‘all I have to say about the ideal State’), 2.33 (‘the ideal condition’), 2.64 (‘as far as the ideal State is concerned’; ‘to define the ideal constitution’).12 But optimus does not actually mean ideal. It means ‘best,’ and may just mean the best that is practicable.”13 In book 1 of On the Republic Scipio is asked to explain what he considers “the best form of a state [optimum statum civitatis]” (Rep., 1.33). He proceeds to describe the three simple forms of government—the rule of the one, of the few, and of the many—that would be well-known to students of Greek philosophy, before settling on “a moderation and mixing together of these three” as the form that “should be most approved of” (Rep., 1.45). Unfortunately, three lacunae in the text occur between 1.33 and 1.45, so we cannot fully trace Scipio’s argument. Along the way, however, he claims that “any one of these three kinds—if it maintains the bond that first bound men among themselves in the fellowship of a republic—though it is not indeed perfect [perfectum], nor do I feel it is the best [optimum], is nevertheless tolerable” (Rep., 1.42). Here Cicero apparently distinguishes between the best conceivable or the perfect, and the best achievable. It is noteworthy (albeit justified) that all four of the major published translations render perfectum as “perfect,” despite the fact that, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the word may mean “[r]ealized to its full extent, complete” as well as “[d]eveloped or completed so as to have all the desired qualities.”14 Only the latter definition would be the equivalent of the ideal or the best conceivable. Cicero’s failure to use the word perfectum to describe his task in On the Republic—as when he writes to his brother Quintus that the work is “on the best form of a state and on the best citizen [de optimo statu civitatis et de optimo cive]” (Q Fr., 3.5.1)—suggests that what we would call an ideal state is not what he has in mind. What he does seem to have in mind is the mixed Roman constitution, with the rule of one represented by the consuls (and the dictator when necessary), the rule of few by the senate, and the rule of many by the people’s right to appeal magistrates’ decisions and by the tribunes. The “best citizen” mentioned in the letter to Quintus is apparently the director of the republic, a function—but probably not intended to be a separate office—discussed in book 5, almost all of which is lost.

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

153

The tendency on the part of many scholars to regard Cicero’s view of the Roman republic as that of an ideal stems in part from his view that the republic has deteriorated in his day from an earlier time.15 Powell’s analysis is sound, though, that Cicero “never admits . . . that Rome no longer has a mixed constitution of the best kind. His message therefore is not that we Romans once had the ideal constitution, say in 449, and that we must get back to it. . . . His message is that we acquired the mixed, i.e. best, constitution in 449, have had it ever since, and still have it.”16 One could claim to find idealism lurking in Cicero’s account of Roman history in book 2. It is an admittedly selective account. For example, he omits the murder by Romulus, Rome’s first king, of his brother Remus as part of the city’s founding; unsurprisingly Machiavelli mentions that detail more than once (Discourses, 1.9.29–30, 1.18.51). It is possible, as Mansfield suggests, that Cicero is attempting to illustrate the anti-Machiavellian point that “human justice (or natural right) is attainable without descending to criminal actions.”17 But as Mansfield also recognizes, the account must be seen in the context of the dialogue as a whole.18 Cicero identifies those aspects of Roman history that indicate the development of Rome’s mixed constitution. The character of Scipio, who narrates the history, need not mention all the details surrounding Romulus’s ascension because his listeners already know those things.19 On the matter of republics, then, Cicero does not go to the extreme that Machiavelli attacks: he is not someone “who lets go of what is done for what should be done” (Prince, 15.61). Rather, as I will explain more fully in the third section, he keeps one foot firmly in each corner.

SKEPTICISM, RHETORIC, AND THE “EFFECTUAL TRUTH” To see where Cicero stands with respect to Machiavelli’s notion of “effectual truth” we should examine his treatment of the practical art of rhetoric. On this subject, in particular on the relation between philosophy and rhetoric, Cicero countenances an attack on Socrates and Plato, whom he otherwise treats with near reverence. I say “countenances” because not all of the attack comes through Cicero’s own voice, so not all of it—to say the least—can be called his deepest thought on the subject. Cicero writes two of his three works on oratory as dialogues. In the first part of the trilogy, On the Orator, the two main characters are Lucius Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius, each of whom was a consul and a great orator; the former, in particular, was the most renowned Roman orator before Cicero. The debate concerns the prerequisites and characteristics of excellence in oratory, especially the nature and extent of knowledge needed to be

154

David S. Fott

an orator. Crassus argues for a close bond between philosophy and rhetoric. After praising Socrates for his “wisdom, sharpness, loveliness, and subtlety” as well as for the “eloquence, variety, and fertility” of his discussion, Crassus criticizes him for having “separated the knowledge of thinking wisely from that of speaking ornately—which in fact cohere. . . . Hence there has arisen an undoubtedly absurd, disadvantageous, and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the heart, as it were, so that some teach us to be wise, others to speak” (De or., 3.60–61). Philosophy is truly speechless without oratory, for even a person who has perfect knowledge of a subject cannot talk in a learned manner unless he knows how to “polish” a speech; Socrates was wrong to suggest otherwise (De or., 1.63; see Plato, Gorgias). Crassus suggests that the separation of philosophy from oratory has had especially dire consequences for the pursuit of virtue. On the subjects of “concord; friendship; the common law of citizens, men, and nations; equity; temperance; greatness of soul; every kind of virtue,” he says, all the colleges and all the schools of philosophers will shout that these things are their own, and that nothing at all pertains to the orator. Although I admit that they may discuss all of these things in their corners for the sake of spending leisure, I will assign and give this matter to the orator: let him explain with all seriousness and agreeableness the same things that they argue about in a thin, bloodless sort of manner of speaking. (De or., 1.56)

If the philosopher needs oratory, Crassus is equally certain that the orator needs philosophy; on that point the protagonists agree. Antonius first argues against Crassus that the orator should sample the knowledge of such liberal arts as philosophy, but that he need not have full possession of that knowledge (De or., 1.218). On the next day, however, Antonius admits that he hid his real thoughts because a reputation for philosophy lessens the orator’s authority and the audience’s trust in his oration (De or., 2.40,156). Antonius’s real opinion is that the orator must master knowledge of the virtues and political science (De or., 2.67–68). He thus agrees with Crassus, who said that the orator must know at least the part of philosophy that is concerned with life and customs (De or., 1.68–69). Cicero elaborates on this subject in the two other parts of the trilogy: as a character in the dialogue Brutus, and more straightforwardly in the treatise Orator. The philosophers’ talk about virtue is not sufficiently serious or weighty. They may speak “ornately,” but their speech has “neither the nerves nor the cutting remarks” necessary to succeed in public affairs (Orat., 62). They converse “for the purpose of teaching, not captivating” (Orat., 63). There is nothing “angry” in their style, “nothing grudging, nothing fierce, nothing plaintive, nothing shrewd; only a pure, modest, uncorrupted

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

155

maiden” (Orat., 64). Moreover, philosophers cannot make virtue agreeable to most people. Their logic—especially their use of dialectic—raises more questions about the meaning and status of the virtues than it answers. It is thus likely to leave their audience in a state of indecision, when instead firm action is needed. Cicero criticizes Plato for having failed to provide dialogues that would make courts, which admittedly feature fluent speakers, attractive to the learned (Orat., 13). This attack on Plato comes despite Cicero’s repeated praise of him as a speaker (not merely a writer) of great richness (Brut., 120-21; Orat., 10, 62). At one point Plato becomes for Cicero, in effect, both the standard of wisdom hailed by Demosthenes (the greatest orator, according to Cicero), and the symbol of the limitation of wisdom when faced with the need to win public approval (Brut., 191). Socrates and Plato may have had the personal qualities of eloquence and charm, but they rendered philosophy powerless in the world it must call home. In this sense Cicero clearly implies that they are deficient as philosophic exemplars. Yet Cicero also claims that his own oratorical ability has come from the Academy—the school founded by Plato—and not from rhetoricians’ workshops (Orat., 12). Eloquence requires philosophy, he says, because the very foundation of eloquence is a kind of wisdom, namely the knowledge of what sort of oratory to use in a given situation (Orat., 14, 70). Cicero’s teaching in those three works on oratory bears some resemblance to the heart of Machiavelli’s philosophic project. Philosophers who could not effect the republics of their dreams, according to Machiavelli, have led people to their destruction. For him too the powerless philosopher is deficient as a philosophic exemplar—that is, as one who is concerned with the truth. Machiavelli’s teaching appears to be shaped by an understanding of harsh necessity, which requires that a prince act decisively in order to win or maintain his state, as is seen in his analysis of fortune (Prince, chap. 25). The Prince contains only one mention of the word “philosopher” or a form of it, and that is to describe the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was also a man of action (Prince, 19.75). (The entire Discourses on Livy has only three references to “philosopher”: one to Cicero, one to Aristotle and Cicero, and one to unknown sources [Discourses, 1.56.114, 2.5.138, 3.12.246].) Upon further examination, however, the resemblance between Cicero and Machiavelli on this point has limits. Discourses contains five references to “oration” (The Prince has none), none of which suggests that an orator needs liberal education (Discourses, 1.4.17, 2.15.158–59, 3.12.248, 3.34.289–90, 3.46.307). Even less, then, does a Machiavellian orator or prince need philosophy in the Ciceronian sense.

156

David S. Fott

The Ciceronian sense is ostensibly that of the Academy, the school founded by Plato and modeled on the life of Socrates. The Academy (at its best, according to Cicero) took a skeptical approach toward all philosophical questions; it maintained not that nothing seems true, but . . . that false sorts of things are joined to all true things by such a similarity that there is no definite mark in them for judging and assenting. From this it stands out that many things are probable; although they are not thoroughly comprehended, nevertheless because they have a sort of distinguished and bright appearance a wise person may regulate his life. (Nat. D., 1.12)

To be an Academic was to subscribe to a method, not to any substantive conclusions. In another work Cicero refers to “that true and elegant philosophy, conducted by Socrates” (Tusc., 4.6). For Socrates, who wrote no philosophical treatise or dialogue we know of, philosophy is not a doctrine advanced by a school or a set of fixed conclusions. It is a way of life, the pursuit of wisdom, the striving after knowledge of the whole. That Cicero understands philosophy in this way is further supported by his claims that he pursued philosophy from his youth and that “I philosophized the most when I least seemed to be doing so” (Nat. D., 1.6). This remark is an obvious reference to the long periods of his life spent as a politician and a lawyer; it seems to indicate that he sees philosophy as a continuous pursuit that does not require the constant reading and writing of philosophical works. Ciceronian or Socratic skepticism does not make an appearance in The Prince or Discourses. But the claim that Cicero’s linking of philosophy and rhetoric resembles the Machiavellian project faces a more radical challenge. Mansfield suggests that at the center of Cicero’s philosophical project was an attempt to provide a home for philosophy in Rome, which had always distrusted philosophy, and at the same time to resuscitate stern republican virtues, which many Romans (such as Cato the Censor) considered to be in decline: His solution was to promote philosophy as manliness, hence preternaturally Roman, even if accidentally Greek in origin, and to accomplish this feat of salesmanship by means of an alliance between philosophy and rhetoric. . . . When tamed, rhetoric could do the same useful service to philosophy as poetry and without the political disadvantages of quaintness and daintiness. Like poetry, it could help philosophy defend itself, and its disputatious habit, which is not in poetry, might keep philosophy from hardening in dogmatism.20

To explain his claim that Cicero’s linkage between philosophy and rhetoric is an exoteric teaching, Mansfield turns to the Tusculan Disputations, where

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

157

Cicero “brings out the fortitude of philosophy in its contempt for death and pain, rather than its erotic yearning to know the whole.”21 Other details of this work are also remarkable. Tusculan Disputations advances five predominantly Stoic moral theses—which amount to the claim that the wise man should be content with a virtuous life and not be troubled by pain or death—in the form of five discussions between two persons referred to as A and M; the A may stand for Auditor or Adolescens, and the M may stand for Marcus or Magister. In each discussion A advances a proposition, and M argues against it. Shortly after the dialogue begins A announces that he prefers continuous speech to dialectic (Tusc., 1.16), and M accordingly adapts his method. We may infer, then, that what we have is a series of (more or less) monologues that treat their themes with less than full philosophic rigor—given Cicero’s appreciation of the Socratic method. It is significant that each of the last four days of the five days of conversations begins with M and A descending to “the Academy,” the name of the lower gymnasium of Cicero’s villa at Tusculum, as Socrates descends to the Piraeus at the beginning of Plato’s Republic (Tusc., 2.9, 3.7, 4.7, 5.11). At the beginning of the work Cicero says that he wants to use philosophy to benefit his fellow citizens, and (in keeping with his linking of philosophy and rhetoric in the trilogy on oratory) he criticizes philosophers who cannot attract readers. The result of his efforts will be “fully developed philosophy [perfecta philosophia]” (Tusc., 1.5–7; quotation from 1.7). In the prologue to book 2, however, before A and M make their descent, Cicero remarks in his own voice that he must philosophize, and not, as some would have it, just a little bit; for philosophizing is such that, once begun, it is difficult to go only part way (Tusc., 2.1). Philosophy inherently “flees the multitude,” who are suspicious of it (Tusc., 2.4). Then he reminds us that the Academy is the school he follows “for the most part” (Tusc., 2.4). It is at this point—when Cicero is standing above the Academy both literally (through his characters A and M in the gymnasium) and figuratively (his own philosophical school)—that we are most likely to see his true view of the nature of philosophy. If philosophy “flees the multitude,” it is not inextricably connected to rhetoric, as we have been led to believe. Partisans do need rhetoric; but ultimately Cicero is a free thinker, not an intellectual or political partisan.

STOICISM AND MORAL FLEXIBILITY Tusculan Disputations is one of a number of Cicero’s works in which he approves of some aspect of Stoicism, or allows a dialogic character to do so. The most widely known of them is On Duties, written as a long letter to his son Marcus, who had shown some talent in military affairs and was then

158

David S. Fott

studying philosophy in Athens. In this treatise father gives son advice on how he should regulate his daily life. In treating the subject of duties Cicero says that he will follow the Stoics, not as a mere “translator” of their principles, but using his independent judgment (Off., 1.6). Among Cicero’s admonitions are that his son should always act honorably, and that an honorable (honestum) action is always advantageous (utile) (Off., 3.20). This teaching does not gibe with the virtue of a Machiavellian prince, which involves recognizing the need “to be able not to be good” (Prince, 15.61). Yet there are connections between The Prince and On Duties, a work that Machiavelli almost surely read (given its prominence and accessibility in the Renaissance). The most obvious connection involves Cicero’s statement that “there are two kinds of contending, one by discussion, the other by force; and since the former is appropriate for man, the latter for beasts, the inferior kind should be resorted to only if one is not allowed to use the superior” (Off., 1.34). He continues, “While injustice may be done in two ways, by force or by deceit, deceit seems to belong to the little fox, so to speak, and force to the lion; both are very alien to man, but deceit is deserving of greater hatred” (Off., 1.41). These passages may well have been the inspiration for Machiavelli’s similar typology, although Machiavelli changes “discussion” to “laws” (Prince, 18.69). And of course he draws a different conclusion: “because the first [i.e., laws] is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second [i.e., force]” (Prince, 18.69). Moreover, “since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion” (Prince, 18.69).22 One scholar, Marcia Colish, enumerates several other parallels between the two books, including Cicero’s claim that duties change with changes in circumstances, which is in keeping with Machiavelli’s advocacy of flexible conduct.23 For example, it may become just not to keep a promise if fulfilling it would cause excessive harm to either party (Off., 1.31–32). Colish argues further that Cicero comes closer to Machiavelli’s doctrine of “effectual truth” when he “elevates the utile to the level of an ethical criterion in its own right, making it the norm of the honestum. He also redefines the honestum itself, treating it not as Stoic virtue, which he sees as inhuman and unattainable in practice, but as the medium officium, the intermediate duty of the public man, which can be achieved in the real world and which pertains to the usus vitae, the needs of daily life.”24 Colish’s statement is initially plausible. Cicero does treat virtue in terms of its role in promoting mutual cooperation and the satisfaction of people’s natural, ordinary desires (Off., 2.17–18). Colish exaggerates, though, when she asserts that On Duties is “the last in a series of ethical writings in which he sought to formulate his own moral philosophy.”25 The cause of the exaggeration is her neglect of the fact that the work was written for a particular purpose—the instruction of Cicero’s

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

159

son—and that other works had other purposes. Cicero’s son proved to be dissolute during his stay in Athens. Cicero, aware of his son’s tendencies, must know that the only way to appeal to him is in terms of what was advantageous, and that he has to lower the standard of what was honorable. Cicero does expect On Duties to be read by other young Romans preparing for positions of influence, but he never says that it is intended to provide universal moral rules, or even moral rules for all Romans. It is true, as Colish argues, that Cicero considers pure Stoicism too inflexible for the needs of Roman politics. This is evident in a number of his philosophical works. In Stoic Paradoxes he attempts to make certain Stoic moral doctrines (e.g., all transgressions are equal, only the wise man is free) more widely palatable by describing the lives of famous men, not by using the Stoic method of the syllogism. In On the Ends of Good and Bad Things, however, he criticizes those same doctrines as unfit for civic life (Fin., 4.21). The highest human perfection is, as the Stoics say, reason leading to virtue; but higher and lower faculties are both part of human nature (Fin., 4.37).26 Directly contrary to what the Stoics say, virtue is stunted unless natural, external conditions, such as health, are goods and contribute to happiness; for virtue consists in choosing well among those things, and it is natural to desire them (Fin., 4.40). For the Stoics to claim that honorableness alone is good, is to abolish the care of one’s health and estate, the governing of the republic, business matters, and duties; all these things should logically be considered unimportant on the Stoic view (Fin., 4.68).27 In the conclusion of that work he defends Stoic ethics only to the point of its internal consistency, not its truth (Fin., 5.83); but it is no accident that he leaves the reader with a favorable impression of Stoicism. Cicero appears to say in On the Republic that Stoic natural law is trustworthy. The political leader Gaius Laelius gives the classic statement of natural law: “True law is indeed right reason congruent with nature, spread among all people, constant, everlasting. . . . There will not be one law at Rome, another at Athens, one now, another later, but one law both everlasting and unchangeable will encompass all nations and for all time” (Rep., 3.27).28 But another political leader, Lucius Furius Philus, reluctantly presents the argument against natural right in the dialogue (Rep., 3.7–18).29 We lack firm grounds for concluding that Cicero fully sides with Laelius’s arguments against Philus’s. One might turn to the companion dialogue, On the Laws, to claim that Cicero believes the argument in favor of natural law, because Cicero is himself one of the main participants in the discussion and speaks favorably of it there; but this claim would be unjustified. Much of On the Laws is devoted to proposing and explaining proper laws for Rome. Most but not all of those laws were actual laws of the Roman republic, either prior to Cicero’s time or during it. As he says, “[I]f by chance today I propose some [laws]

160

David S. Fott

that neither are nor were in our republic, they will nevertheless be for the most part [those that were formerly] part of the custom of our ancestors, which was then as strong as a law” (Leg., 2.23). The first two points to be noted about Cicero’s proposed laws, which concern religion and magistracies, are that (1) they are purportedly rooted in nature and the will of the god(s); and (2) Cicero keeps his distance from natural law. Cicero announces the subject of the discussion as “the entire cause of universal right and laws,” “the nature of law,” which “should be traced from human nature” (Leg., 1.17). The civil law of the Romans was only a small part of that universal law. Turning to “the beginnings of law,” he continues: [I]t has pleased very learned men to commence with law—probably rightly, if only, as the same men define it, law is highest reason, implanted in nature, which orders those things that ought to be done [and] prohibits the opposite. When the same reason has been strengthened and perfected in the human mind, it is law. And so they think that law is prudence, the force of which is such as to order people to act rightly [and] forbid them to transgress. And they think this thing has been called [according to] the Greek name for granting to each his own, while I think it comes from our word for choosing.30 For as they put the force of fairness into law, we put the force of choice [delectus] into it. And nevertheless each one is appropriate to law. But if it is thus rightly said, as indeed it mostly and usually seems to me, the beginning of right should be drawn from law. For this is a force of nature; this is the mind and reason of the prudent man; this is the rule of right and wrong. But since our entire speech is in the people’s business, sometimes it will be necessary to speak popularly and to call that a law which, when written, consecrates what it wants by either ordering [or forbidding], as the crowd calls it. (Leg., 1.18–19)

Note the conditional nature of this passage. First, Cicero does not personally claim that right has its root in law; rather “very learned men” have claimed this—“probably rightly,” but only if their definition of law is correct. In fact, Cicero disagrees with those “very learned men” on the etymology of nomos, the Greek word for “law.” Second, in a later sentence he repeats his conditional agreement—with not one, not two, but three qualifiers beyond the “if”: “as indeed it [1] mostly and [2] usually [3] seems to me [ut mihi quidem plerumque videri solet].”31 Third, despite this lack of certainty Cicero is willing to proceed because, after all, “our entire speech is in the people’s business.” Finally, note the conditional nature of the passage that follows: “Since, then, we should maintain and preserve the form of the republic that Scipio taught to be the best in that book [i.e., On the Republic], and since all laws should be adapted to that kind of state, and since customs should be sown

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

161

and not everything should be consecrated in writing, I will trace the root of right from nature, with which as our leader we should pursue the entire debate” (Leg., 1.20). Cicero looks for the source of right in nature not as part of a philosophical inquiry aimed solely at coming as close to truth as possible, but in order to achieve a particular purpose, namely the defense of the mixed constitution championed in On the Republic. For the aforementioned reasons we may conclude that Cicero has his doubts about the trustworthiness of natural law. It does not follow, however, that Cicero believes that we can forget about trying to find a moral standard beyond convention. Recalling Aristotle’s treatment of magnanimity in Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero argues in Tusculan Disputations that the wise man will reject popular honors, even if he has not sought them, for the multitude hate the preeminence that comes from virtue (Tusc., 5.104–5). Cicero exhorts Brutus not to follow the view of the “unwise crowd,” who “are moved by tradition [fama] and the judgment of the multitude” to consider honorableness to be defined by “what is praised by the majority” (Tusc., 2.63). He tells Brutus, “Use your own judgment. If you please yourself in approving the right, then you will have conquered not only yourself . . . but also all people and all things” (Tusc., 2.63). We can see, then, that underlying the reliance on honorableness is a moral standard. According to the earlier discussion, that standard would be advantage. But before we proceed to ask how and by whom advantage should be defined, we should take a step back. The claim that the advantageous is the standard of the honorable assumes that, as Mark Hulliung writes, for Cicero “no conflict is possible between the honestum and the utile.”32 Is that assumption sound? Cicero explains to his son in On Duties that advantage can be found in beneficence to others. But he laments the wastefulness of public games, which he was expected to provide at his own expense when he served in the office of aedile: “If good men do not desire [public games], nevertheless they should assent to them” (Off., 2.58). In other words, funding public games was not honorable to good men, but it advanced Cicero’s career and, he would argue, the good of the republic. “Good men” were those who worked for the good of the republic; there is the standard of honorableness. Cicero makes the point more explicitly in a letter to his friend Servius Sulpicius in 49 BCE. Sulpicius has asked Cicero about his plan for dealing with the growing power of Julius Caesar. Cicero replies, “If we ask what is most right, that is clear; if we ask what is most expedient, that is obscure. But if we are the men we surely ought to be, so that we think nothing is expedient that is not right and honorable, there can be no doubt what we ought to do” (Fam., 4.2.2). If what is right and what is expedient are not equally clear, how can we be sure that the two never conflict?

162

David S. Fott

There is this much similarity, then, between Cicero and Machiavelli: each man teaches that it may be useful, even politically necessary, to act in dishonorable ways. Cicero’s teaching, however, will not be grasped by all readers, while Machiavelli openly proclaims his advice. That is no small difference. Moreover, Machiavelli appears to see a more frequent need for dishonorable action than does Cicero.

CONCLUSION We have seen that it is incorrect to consider Cicero and Machiavelli as polar opposites in political ethics. When Hulliung writes that Cicero’s work “was unfortunately accompanied by a denunciation and denial of the beast within man,”33 he ignores that Cicero recognizes circumstances in which force must be resorted to because discussion is not possible (Off., 1.34). Cicero does not expect political life to be simply harmonious: popular uprisings such as the one that led to the creation of Roman tribunes may be unreasonable, “but the nature of republics itself often overcomes reason” (Rep., 2.57). This happens in part because a crucial feature of good republics is their provision of liberty to the people, and liberty is never tidy. By necessity, then, injustice will occur. But another crucial feature of republics is the presence of “authority in the deliberation of leading men” (Rep., 2.57), such as the Roman senate. Discussion is not always possible, but usually it is—a fact that Machiavelli chooses to ignore in “taking his bearings by the exception, by the extreme case.”34 The need for regular deliberation in government is what led Cicero to support the nobles even toward the end of his life, when he wrongly thought that he could keep Octavian tied to the senate and preserve some sort of mixed constitution, even a weakened one. It is easy for Machiavelli, who does not regard a senate as essential to a sound regime, to condemn Cicero for standing with the senate and, in the process, misunderstanding Octavian (Discourses, 1.52.105)35—criticism that is indeed justified, at least with respect to the charge of naïveté concerning Octavian. Yet Cicero did not rise to Rome’s highest office by being naïve. We have seen him admit the possibility of conflict between what is honorable and what is advantageous. It is not a contradiction for him also to maintain that most of the time the two coincide and to insist that, as duties change with changes in circumstances, there are “foundations of justice” to guide those changes: no harm should be done to anyone, and the common advantage should be preserved (Off., 1.31). The “foundations” are the rule; the conflict between honorable and advantageous, the exception. If a prudent statesman must occasionally act dishonorably, it is important to know what is better than honor. Here Cicero occupies higher ground

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

163

than Machiavelli, for it is more difficult to dissociate from honor a wisdom or knowledge that is measured by its effects, than a pursuit of wisdom that is skeptical about the worth of political things. One need look no further than On the Republic to see that it was a vital question for Cicero—and a difficult one—whether the philosophic or the political life was superior.

NOTES I thank Bret Lease for his assistance with research for this chapter. 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 2nd ed., trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Later citations to The Prince will be inserted in the text with chapter and page numbers from this edition. 2. The Latin noun res that is part of res publica has many meanings, including “concern” and “property.” Citations of Cicero’s works use abbreviations specified by Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) and are to book and section numbers (i.e., sections of the Latin text that are marked with arabic, not roman, numerals). I rely on the Latin texts in the Loeb Classical Library editions of Cicero’s works, with the exception of M. Tulli Ciceronis, “De re publica,” “De legibus,” “Cato Maior de senectute,” “Laelius de amicitia,” ed. J. G. F. Powell, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 2006). All translations from Cicero’s works are mine. Cicero’s writings used in this chapter are abbreviated as follows: Rep. Off. Leg. Q Fr. De or. Orat. Brut. Fam. Nat. D. Tusc. Fin.

On the Republic On Duties On the Laws Letters to His Brother Quintus On the Orator Orator Brutus Letters to His Friends On the Nature of the Gods Tusculan Disputations On the Ends of Good and Bad Things

3. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov suggest that Cicero differs from Machiavelli in condemning the disturbances. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 16 n2, citing Rep., 2.57. Later citations to Discourses will be inserted in the text with book, chapter, and (where a third number is found) page numbers from this edition. But Cicero’s criticism of the people’s uprising is qualified: he says that “reason was perhaps lacking” (italics mine). Moreover, in On the Laws he defends the tribunate against the opposing arguments of his brother Quintus (Leg., 3.16–17,19–26).

164

David S. Fott

4. But as Mansfield observes, Machiavelli elsewhere judges Cesare Borgia’s moderate use of executions to have been more beneficial than the leniency of the Florentine republic. Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 304, citing Prince, chap. 17. 5. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 23. 6. Mansfield notes the fundamental importance of this distinction. Machiavelli’s Virtue, 304–5. 7. Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 85, citing Rep., 1.63, 2.56. 8. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 85. 9. The contrast is noted by Marcia L. Colish, “Cicero’s De Officiis and Machiavelli’s Prince,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (4) (Winter 1978): 85; J. J. Barlow, “The Fox and the Lion: Machiavelli Replies to Cicero,” History of Political Thought 20 (4) (Winter 1999): 633–34. 10. The source of the quotation is thought to be Ennius’s lost play Thyestes. 11. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., CD-ROM, version 3.00 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), s.v. “ideal.” 12. Powell refers to Cicero, “De re publica,” “De legibus,” trans. Clinton Walker Keyes, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928). Powell’s reference to 2.64 is incorrect; the two quotations come from 2.65 and 2.66. 13. J. G. F. Powell, “Were Cicero’s Laws the Laws of Cicero’s Republic?” in Cicero’s Republic, ed. J. G. F. Powell and J. A. North, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 76 (London: University of London, 2001), 26. 14. Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1982), s.v. “perfectus.” In addition to Keyes’s, the translations are by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), George Holland Sabine and Stanley Barney Smith (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1929), and James E. G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 15. For examples of such scholarship, see Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 251 n10; T. J. Cornell, “Cicero on the Origins of Rome,” in Cicero’s Republic, 42; James E. G. Zetzel, “Citizen and Commonwealth in De Re Publica Book 4,” in Cicero’s Republic, 96. 16. Powell, “Were Cicero’s Laws,” 24 (italics in original). 17. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 99. 18. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 135. 19. This point is noted by Cornell, “Cicero on the Origins of Rome,” 43–44. 20. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 33. 21. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 33. 22. For incisive analysis of the differences between Cicero and Machiavelli on this point, see Barlow, “The Fox and the Lion,” 636–37. 23. Colish, “Cicero’s De Officiis,” 85. 24. Colish, “Cicero’s De Officiis,” 86–87. For another critique of Colish on this point, see Barlow, “The Fox and the Lion,” 639–42. 25. Colish, “Cicero’s De Officiis,” 86. 26. Compare Tusculan Disputations, book 2, where the thesis, that pain is at most a slightly bad thing, varies from the Stoic teaching that pain is not bad at all.

How Machiavellian Is Cicero?

165

27. The Stoics did not advocate the rejection of politics, business, and civic duty generally, as Cicero knows. His rhetorical exaggeration here—which occurs in a conversation with Cato the Younger, a Stoic—is the result of the abandonment of the Socratic method; that abandonment comes at Cato’s initiative after Cicero has begun to challenge him. By the time Cicero makes that claim about the Stoics, the conversation has taken the less rigorous form of one long speech after another. 28. Powell’s section number differs from that in earlier editions, which was 33. 29. In earlier editions the section numbers were 8–24. 30. According to Cicero, nomos, which means “law” in Greek, was derived from nemō, “divide”; and lex, which means “law” in Latin, was derived from lego, “choose.” 31. Although I have further developed this point, I owe the beginning of it to an unpublished transcript of a course on Cicero taught by Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago in the spring quarter of 1959. 32. Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 195. Hulliung goes so far as to claim that Machiavelli “turn[ed] the Stoicism of Cicero upside down.” Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli, x (see also 28, 213). We have already seen Cicero’s deviation from Stoicism, so Hulliung is in error there. But he recognizes some distance between Cicero and what he called “original” Stoicism. Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli, 282 n81. 33. Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli, 215. 34. Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (1959; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 47. 35. For an analysis of Machiavelli’s thinking on this matter, see Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the “Discourses on Livy” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 154–55.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 167

8 Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good Travis D. Smith

If Francis Bacon were a captain in Machiavelli’s spiritual army,1 he might well be conceived of as having a commission to be altogether bad for the sake of something altogether good.2 I must confess that I hesitate to approach this investigation in anything other than a conjectural manner, as men are generally instructed to avoid presuming insight into the hearts of men. But, if Bacon were an executor of evil,3 what would that mean, and what great purpose would his teaching serve?

I Machiavelli’s sinister levity proves infectious. Can we talk about evil any more without putting the word in scare quotes? To this, postmodernism, the expression of modern sentiments through explicit lyrics, cries out “no.” In our sophistication we moderns observe that terrorists are only freedom fighters viewed from an obtuse angle. We find blameworthy only negligence in addressing root causes. Hobbes, who served as Bacon’s assistant and to whom all modern men are much beholden, states scientifically that evil, like good, is just a point of view.4 Is the villainy constitutive of the man who worships evil’s might a frivolous fiction properly consigned to comic books? In the Republic, Socrates argues that Glaucon’s model man of perfect justice, who always acts rightly without reward while earning a reputation for wrongdoing, represents an indefensible ideal.5 Although Socrates vividly portrays the life of actual tyrants as miserable in the extreme, it is less clear that the life of the perfectly unjust man, whose constant wrongdoing goes 167

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

168

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 168

Travis D. Smith

unseen while praise for him abounds, should be avoided—supposing that it could be lived. It would be extraordinarily difficult and improbable, but then so also is the philosophic life. Its principal disadvantage is its incompatibility with true friendship. Indeed, those who follow Machiavelli, whether well or poorly, deliberately or unwittingly, are bound to be lonely.6 What would it mean to be altogether bad? Machiavelli leaves the impression that he primarily means that half-measures will necessarily fail in extraordinary pursuits. Confronted with a situation that calls for unwavering resolve, it is ruinous to tiptoe or flinch. In a struggle for survival with enemies that will not be appeased, for example, republics and principalities alike must be ready to move quickly and be able to wipe them out, disregarding the recriminations of impotent arrogance and enlightened cowardice. Hesitating or showing mercy means relying on luck, and one should do no such thing. Strauss rejects the idea that Machiavelli recommends “universal and perpetual terror, which no one even seemingly wise ever counselled.”7 In response, one could argue that some leaders, including some in Strauss’s recent memory, outdo old-fashioned tyranny and strive to practice “total terror.”8 An unmitigated technological mindset makes it seem doable and justifiable. To attempt it is to counsel it, and as crazy as it sounds, men such as these have attracted many admirers who thought them wise. Some remain esteemed by artists and intellectuals. To avoid being hated, however, a man of Machiavellian virtue would generally avoid using terror directly or too regularly. And the perfectly unjust man would swindle people into consuming harms voluntarily and voraciously, remedying their indigestion with additional poisons. Being altogether bad would involve constancy, dexterity, and magnitude. It would mean intending or accomplishing harm even when seeming to help. Consider Sejanus, “at heart possessed by a towering ambition,” risking his own life to prevent an inopportune death from befalling Tiberius because his designs on the empire depend on the emperor surviving awhile.9 Consider the “men” who recruit the weak for suicidal operations, cultivating in them a pretense of strength, promising them incredible rewards while leading them to oblivion at best, to be admired only by the depraved, and then but fleetingly.10 All too easily have men in positions of authority secured their power and legacy by intentionally keeping those under them miserable, enriching themselves at their expense and yet earning their gratitude and admiration, manipulating their perceptions and inflaming their hatred for others. But these examples do not go far enough. It seems to me that in order to be altogether bad, simply and precisely, a man would have to have no hope that his evildoing will yield any conceivable good to anyone, himself included. He would be irredeemable, acting only to spread his wretchedness, and even perverse pleasures would elude him.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 169

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

169

Perhaps one can imagine an extreme point at which the altogether good and the altogether bad touch and intermingle.11 I suspect that every adolescent boy fantasizes about being altogether good and altogether bad in combination and alternation: destroying himself in order to save the world; destroying the world in order to save the world; and destroying the world in order to destroy the world.12 In his blackest moments, every perfectly normal teenager thinks that he wants to see the sun blotted out from the sky. Unfortunately, some of these boys grow older without growing up. And thanks to the Baconian project, destructive powers are presently available on a massive scale for purposes of wish fulfillment. Ordinarily, men know how to be neither altogether good nor altogether bad. Machiavelli’s teaching is principally directed to the rare exceptions. All the same, the upshot of a pervasive acceptance of an invariably diluted Machiavellian ethics is that men are further emboldened to be bad whenever they can get away with it, repenting only when caught and exhibiting goodness only because calculation recommends it. The upside to living this way is a much increased satisfaction of appetites and accumulation of stuff. The downside is subsequently reckoned illusory even when it is deeply felt.

II What is it to harm somebody? What is the rank order among different harms? Deadly violence, unremitting brutal cruelty, is the summum malum according to man’s senses. But all things considered, it is not obvious that suffering the crudest kind of oppression is the worst imaginable fate. It is one thing to smite and slaughter another people. It is something else to make them surrender to a harsh new law, convert their institutions, reorient their thinking, and then force them to transmit a desolate way of life to their descendants and neighbors. Miraculously, the arch-malefactors who lead the struggle to subdue and impoverish the souls of men sometimes profit greatly and win a lasting reputation in the process. Naturally, to better secure obedience and avert criticism, they claim to receive inspiration from a higher source. Francis Bacon himself modestly maintains that he is an agent of providence. His science is merely a temporis partus (W III:527, cf. VI:433) that contributes to the fulfillment of ancient prophesies (W III:220–21, IV:91–92, IV:311–12). And when Bacon’s latter-day saints foretell of historically necessitated revolutionary tribulations and transformations, their scientific divinations look remarkably derivative. Harms may be mistaken for benefits. Sometimes goods wrongly pursued or inappropriately received turn out to be harmful. St. Augustine explains how evil men can turn a good, such as life, to evil, while good men can turn an evil, such as death, to good, and that wicked men who enjoy lifelong

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

170

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 170

Travis D. Smith

good fortune should not be envied.13 According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest evils may be committed when the greatest of goods are pursued in a manner that defies the order of things.14 On the subject of saints, remember St. Paul’s claim that he would gladly be accursed if it meant that his brethren would be saved (Romans 9:3; W VI:405). It takes a diabolical man to indifferently doom a great many in order to save himself (and perhaps a few others)—although laboring to damn others without entertaining any kind of hope for oneself is admittedly worse. Did Machiavelli or Bacon hope to be saved? Did they hope for the same salvation as St. Paul? One would need to peer into Paul’s heart in order to answer that question. Machiavelli certainly invites his reader to wonder who it is that his teaching is intended to serve. Let us imagine that the prince to whom The Prince is actually dedicated, and with whom Machiavelli seeks long-term employment, is not the “Magnificent” Lorenzo (whose lasting glory will forever rival that of Mr. Francis Godolphin, of Godolphin), but rather the princeps huius mundi (John 12:31), a prince of far greater majesty than some Florentine thug (even if he does not really exist).15 And supposing that he does not exist, Machiavelli could be seen as eyeing that vacant office for himself. Bacon has instead the “excellent” (optimus) James I to whom to dedicate his principal writings (e.g., W I:431, III:261, cf. I:123–24). Addressing his audience as “we Christians” (W V:215) he places his writings in the service of the Princeps pacis (Isaiah 9:6), although any “arch-heretic” (W II:672) sharing his circumstances would do likewise.

III Bacon distinguishes between the ordinary course of nature, unusual objects and events that seem monstrous or marvelous,16 and artificial things (W III:330–33, IV:253, IV:294–98).17 This demarcation is expedient but not profound. It is sufficient for the preliminary differentiation of observable phenomena, but it does not correspond to any deeper reality. The fundamental truth underlying this tripartite division is that everything that is, was, or could be is equally natural. While modern science is a pathway to much that many will consider to be unnatural, Bacon’s portrait of nature renders it nonsensical to denounce any thing, ability, or action in this fashion. Only something strictly impossible should be classified as unnatural, and so long as man remains somewhat in the dark, knowing nature only in part, it would be childish to call anything impossible. He should simply concede that he is, for the time being, ignorant of the requisite know-how. To declare a disease incurable, for instance, is only to “enact a law of neglect” (W III:375, cf. IV:387). Men are thus impelled to achieve powers

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 171

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

171

greater than they can presently imagine. With sufficient ingenuity, labor, and expense, anything can happen (W III:328–29, IV:291). Whereas alchemists and magicians, for example, deserve censure because their speculations are fanciful, their traditions are fraudulent, and their methods are faulty; their ultimate objectives nevertheless warrant the full attention of scientific men. Verily, the most impressive powers of experimental science shall be worthy of the name “Magic” (W IV:126). Successfully affecting the tangible things of this world depends on understanding the motions, interactions, and configurations of invisible matter. All that “really exists,” Bacon testifies, are “individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law” (W IV:120). In this sense, “it is nature which governs everything” (W IV:295), and the mastery of fortune requires submission to necessity accordingly (P XV:61–62). Within the parameters set by the constitution of the cosmos (the fixity of which cannot be confirmed until man has fully exercised his prerogative to ascertain everything), all things remain available for manipulation without end. There are no natural kinds, let alone privileged species, and nature offers no criteria according to which anything may be said to reach its fullest flourishing. Ironically, the fact that nature establishes no norms serves as the basis for ardent moralizing. To ask “wherefrom” rather than “whereby” when investigating nature is something that Bacon condemns as an enormous “evil” (W IV:67). Nature affects astonishing transformations upon itself. In studying its operations man learns how to generate extraordinary results far exceeding nature’s own accidents. Bacon recommends putting all of nature to the test, binding and enslaving it (W III:333, IV:257, IV:298; F 62), because “the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom” (W IV:29). Although Bacon occasionally depicts man as embodying a singular instance of supernatural influence in the world, possessing a rational soul of otherworldly origin (e.g., W III:379, IV:396–97, V:314),18 his reasons for so doing are foreign to natural philosophy proper. Man must be understood as a part of nature, perhaps nature’s most outstanding accident. He is, therefore, bound to betray himself by experimenting upon himself, striving to become his own master thereby.

IV Promising to “subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity” (W IV:27), technological progress aims at unlimited power. It assumes the form of an irresistible process, overflowing with impersonal beneficence. Bacon knows that his personal contribution to its development is but “a grain of mustard-seed” (W V:127; Matthew 13:31–32). He is

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

172

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 172

Travis D. Smith

glad that others will “go beyond” him (W III:490). “For having set up the goal,” he says, “I hand on the lamp to others” (W V:308; cf. F 61). Bacon spotlights himself as the source of an Enlightenment largely accessible even to “the profane vulgar” (W IV:450). The basis of technological science is empirical observation and experiment. Together, these comprise natural history, from which axiomatic theoretical knowledge and practical applications alike shall spring. Bacon provides extensive lists of subjects needing exploration (e.g., W III:167–68, IV:265–70, V:121–23, V:129). He published two preparatory natural histories on specific topics: History of the Winds and History of Life and Death. The subjects of these two inquiries, taken together, suffice as proxies for everything once held mysterious, everything in heaven and on earth, as well as inside us, that makes us suffer and buries us. Foremost among his unfinished texts is History of Dense and Rare, designed to inspire the belief that men might remake all things visible and invisible. “On a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures” is the great hope and promise of Baconian science (W IV:119). The traditional prerogatives of divinities, like the ability to create life and the power to save the ones they care about,19 are placed within its purview.20 Bacon recommends discovering how to superinduce “vegetation on some substance that is not vegetable” (W IV:121, cf. III:158–59), and similarly, incorruptibility on corruptible matter and rationality on things that are not rational. If he were honest, any well-intentioned human genius who champions the possibility of manufacturing benevolent artificial superintelligences would concede that, on his own terms, his own mental capacities are relatively meager. But then it would seem rather foolish to follow him. One need not impute disreputable character and dishonorable motives to imperfect men in order to suffer reservations regarding the Baconian’s pursuit of knowledge and power. Bacon anticipates that science will beget “heats in imitation of the sun’s” (W III:161). Who would you trust to hold the power of the sun (Son?) in the palm of his hand? To create and order a new world?21

V In perspicuous places, Bacon makes charity the motor, margin, and horizon of science (e.g., W III:266). Occasionally he posits power alone as its goal (W III:499, IV:79, IV:119; F 76). Nature does not supply charity as a guide, though—only supernatural powers can do that (W III:479, V:113). Happily, Bacon reports, the dispute over which final cause to choose is “by the Christian faith removed and discharged” (W V:5). Why natural reason should defer to the Christian revelation specifically is not revealed.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 173

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

173

A suitably modified Christianity is the prevailing religion of the people inhabiting Bensalem, the hidden island depicted in New Atlantis. As the establishment of Salomon’s House, the scientific College that is the centerpiece and raison d’être of that imaginary society, predates the fortuitous arrival of Christianity on its shores (W III:138, cf. IV:76), it cannot claim the Christian law of charity as its inspiration. Christianity is privileged because its ethics are most readily reconciled to the priority and priorities of science (cf. W V:7). Baconian charity, “to relieve [man’s] sorrows and necessities” and generate “boundless riches and well-being” (F 100), is thoroughly this-worldly. In thanksgiving, those persons from whom this charity proceeds—inventors, with scientists and physicians together—are adored and honored. Man must have faith that the regrettable missteps and inadvertent side effects of their basically compassionate activities will be remedied by the further application of better science.22 For Baconian charity to work, genuine harms must be easily identifiable and their alleviation uncomplicated. Eventually, well beyond unambiguous pains, wounds, disabilities, and decrepitude, the distresses caused by every frustration of desire (not the least of which involves the search for meaning or the yearning for approval) shall be declared insufferable. Soon every effort that helps men to do or get what they want and be happy with who they think they are shall be recognized as right action, whereas every obstacle thereto will be called unjust. As one leading Bacon scholar discerns, “unrestrained by virtue, charity knows no bounds, and it confuses the goods of the body and the goods of the soul.”23 Mankind’s profoundest longings are refashioned as idiosyncratic preferences, mere thirsts to quench. Man’s spirit is suppressed and his passions tranquilized. The management of moods supplants the development of character. The concept of salutary hardship becomes difficult to accommodate. To say that suffering is man’s permanent condition in this world borders on blasphemy. Precisely because it “admitteth no excess” (W III:443, V:29), Baconian charity may initiate and escalate harms without limit. It emasculates man’s faculty for recognizing and reacting to harm. The relief of any and all pains and difficulties affords justification for every activity. Who would dare obstruct any proposed experiment that promises to conceivably exhibit the potential to possibly cure a disease? A decent man may feel some hesitation, but by what right would he deprive others of these hypothetical benefits? Meanwhile, those whose ambition exceeds the mere cure of diseases are bound to exploit the appeal of curing diseases in order to build momentum for agendas that reach much further. The acquisition of every possible power under the banner of charity becomes a bottomless, self-perpetuating pursuit, since their possession allows men to satisfy any particular appetite that arises or attain any specific objective that they happen to posit.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

174

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 174

Travis D. Smith

In New Atlantis, two mission statements for Salomon’s House are provided. The first, circulated among the general population, publicizes how its endeavors serve the glory of God and the common benefit of men (W III:146). The second, its self-description, emphasizes its raw pursuit of knowledge for the sake of acquiring power after power (W III:156). This College is wise enough to conduct its experiments in secret, immune from public scrutiny, political interference, economic fluctuations, foreign espionage, or sabotage. The people of Bensalem enjoy contentment, satisfaction, health, safety, and comfort, an invented happiness rarely disturbed. Understandably, Salomon’s House blesses the people with but a small fraction of its power and inhibits their taste for innovation, keeping their society remarkably un-futuristic. Resembling a new monkish priesthood,24 the Fathers of Salomon’s House survey the herd of men in their generous care as beings to be “pitied” (W III:154). Surely, pathetic life forms like these creatures cannot well distinguish benefits from harms. On reflection, it is not immediately evident why men are worthy of the benefactions of science (i.e., of scientists). What is man that Bacon is mindful of him?

VI Whereas those who love to dominate others crave the military applications of technology, no gift of modern science compares with medicine in its popularity with most men (cf. D I.5.2; P IX:39). Bacon partitions medicine into maintaining health, curing diseases, and prolonging life, but he indicates that “the human body is in everything the subject of medicine” (W IV:396). He thereby medicalizes everything pertaining to reproduction, as well as every physical process affecting man’s behavior. It grieves him that “cures of the mind” have customarily fallen to religion rather than medicine (W III:368, cf. IV:377). All told, cures shall be found for “a thousand” diseases (W III:373, IV:383). As the “noblest work” of natural philosophy is “the restitution and renovation of things corruptible” (W VI:721), it is hoped that aging may be stalled, even reversed. Once conceived of as a bona fide possibility, the provision of perfect health and indefinitely long life soon verges on an obligation in man’s imagination. All death is deemed untimely. In Machiavelli’s writings, sickness appears as the cause of ruin at critical moments, suggesting that man should not leave his good health to chance.25 Medicine’s perfection is needed to complement the victory over natural accident and human violence, the external causes of man’s mortality. Extreme optimism abounds in modern philosophy regarding the possibility of bringing the vicissitude of things to an end. Bacon’s History of the Winds, for instance, may be read as an early environmentalist tract, urging

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 175

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

175

mankind to embark upon climate control to protect itself against the elements. Hobbes’s political science, too, as a technology for preserving life, emanates from the same comprehensive plan. What would a man give up, give in to, or go in for in order to win extraordinary abilities or immortality? References to assorted repugnant experiments that allegedly yield fantastic effects pepper Bacon’s natural histories. His examples include vivisections, dismemberments, bathing in blood, ritual cannibalism, and vampirism.26 Bacon dutifully appends objections to most of the more ghastly experiments that he mentions, but these warnings lose their gravity when they are examined on his own terms. If some line of experimentation proves inefficacious, greater ingenuity is the proper response, not resignation. Aesthetic objections in particular carry absolutely no weight. Bacon berates supposedly learned men for their proud aversion to the dirty work involved in compelling nature to divulge its secrets. Moreover, there is no gruesome experiment that cannot be sanitized or kept out of sight. And given the premises and purposes of his science as a whole, when Bacon flags an experiment as being inhuman (W II:625, III:374, IV:202, IV:386), it should serve as an invitation rather than a deterrent. Authentic Baconian scientists keep their sights focused on the endgame at all times, preparing for every unexpected contingency (cf. P XXV:98). Nothing that may contribute to reaching their furthermost goals should be omitted.27 To assuage the anxieties of men who are less farsighted and more squeamish, temporary moratoriums and other concessions may have strategic value. Instead of antagonizing a timid people needlessly, erode their prejudices, desensitize them, and render them complicit as well as complacent. Eventually, the beneficiaries of what were once regarded as technological horrors will wonder what the hell all the fuss was about (cf. D I.9.2; P XVIII:71).

VII The Baconian hero does not fight monsters; he makes them. New Atlantis leaves the impression that Bacon envisions splitting us rational animals into two distinct types: those whose (non-predatory) animality wholly defines them, and others whose animality becomes vestigial as they approximate pure rationality. While the latter type would administrate the existence of the former, they would transcend the vulgar pleasure that some take in bossing around lesser men. Their quest for greater power through the indefinite expansion of the “Human Empire” (W III:156), however, would be relentless.28 Far beyond uniting all of mankind under a common cause,29 enlarging the Human Empire means conquering everything below and above humanity. Technically speaking, it is inaptly named, as acquiring and governing it means superseding humanity.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

176

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 176

Travis D. Smith

Although unusual, humanity is scarcely special as such.30 Worse, the natural human condition seems so inhuman that men ought to relieve it until nothing remains of it. Man was made to suffer, but he should not accept this as his lot in life. Only by assuming responsibility for his own self-overcoming does man become something special. Humanism therefore entails and serves as a euphemism for contempt for humanity. The Baconian project makes misanthropes of anyone who does not view the given human condition as a disaster in dire need of a makeover, an urgent problem desperately seeking a solution. Orchestrated attempts to change human nature in order to create the new man, overman, posthuman, cyborg, and so on are increasingly hackneyed variations on the Baconian motif, itself an elaboration on a Machiavellian theme.31 But unlike proponents of liberal eugenics or transhuman rights nowadays, Bacon deserves credit for having integrity enough not to pretend that his project is compatible with egalitarian justice.

VIII Bacon does, however, profess that his project is compatible with Christianity.32 He works to make the good news new again. The Reformation renders Christian doctrine pliable (cf. D II.2.2, II.5.1), and Bacon writes during an opportune lull between periods of greater peril for the theologically resourceful in England. While I may not pass final judgment on the sincerity of his piety, that Bacon must appear “all piety” (W VII:261; D I.11.3, I.12.1; P XVIII:70) is indisputable.33 Dedicated to “the glory of the Creator [opifex (W I:462)] and the relief of man’s estate” (W III:294), the ends he attributes to learning correspond roughly to Christ’s two commandments (Matthew 22:37–40). He emphasizes the need to disentangle faith and philosophy, although he keeps his own counsel imperfectly, confounding empirical observation and the evidence of revelation within his natural histories in ways that invite curiosity. He boasts that his science is altogether new (and simultaneously, consistent with the wisdom of the most distant ancients as concealed within pagan mythology) and that it will examine everything under the sun afresh. To this end he purges philosophy of those obstructions to its progressive movement that are caused by its corrupt traditions. He prefers bullying and falsely accusing his predecessors to engaging them in meticulous disputation (cf. D II.13, III.40).34

IX The program to upgrade our species is hardwired into the basic language of Bacon’s natural philosophy. It is prompted by his discussion of the Idols of

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 177

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

177

the Tribe (W IV:54–59, IV:432–33). It is installed within his typology of things in the world. If man is already a marvel—that is, something seemingly preternatural from the perspective of the rest of nature following its ordinary course—then man merely mimics nature’s most bizarre and uncanny example if he should make artificial monsters and marvelous supermen commonplace. Insofar as man is a natural phenomenon, so is the manmade transformation of man. In a telling anthropomorphosis of nature—something his own metaphysics should disallow—Bacon indicates that the appearance of marvelous and monstrous things reveals nature’s “perversities and insubordination,” its “wayward and rebellious” inclinations (W V:505, cf. IV:253, IV:294). Man therefore serves as nature’s special agent in enacting its rebellion—against some higher authority that prefers to keep nature subordinate, presumably—by reinventing himself and his world. As if it were not bold enough to infer that the true imitation of God is man’s re-imagination and re-creation of himself,35 Bacon prays for God’s assistance in the execution of this enterprise (W IV:20, IV:33, VII:259-60; F 59). Should God grant to men the power to dispense all alms (eleemosyna, W I:131, I:145), He will have been maneuvered into rendering Himself obsolete. Worded otherwise, should “demum omnipotentiæ et clementiæ divinæ administri” (W II:103) reliably do everything that men once trusted God to do or not do according to His mysterious will, they would render Him superfluous. Alms being the arms befitting an unarmed faith, Bacon heeds Machiavelli’s counsel with respect to borrowing another’s arms in order to kill him with them (without revealing that this is one’s purpose when asking) (D I.44). He envisions a most perfect Machiavellian liberality (P XVI:64), appropriating everything from one in order to benefit all others in every way. Bacon aspires to be more charitable than God, whose charity is paltry and hurtful, deserving of faithlessness and ingratitude.36 Bacon heeds his own counsel against taking Diomedes—who assaults deities personally, in broad daylight—as a role model (W VI:732–33). To induce the death of (the idea of) God, His executioners, Bacon’s Christian soldiers, must know not what they do. Believing that God is the sponsor of their mission rather than its victim, men would not only permit, commit, and undergo anything for the worldly benefits that Bacon promises, but also risk otherworldly wrath, too, all the while anticipating otherworldly reward. Men would fancy themselves as serving a God against whom they unwittingly trespass. Bacon puts God’s mercy to the test, delivering unto Him hordes of lukewarm, nominal disciples, whose wholehearted faith in scientific men eclipses their professed faith in the Son of Man. Bacon is famous for being fatally preoccupied with experiments into the conservation of bodies. That he purportedly sacrifices himself while conducting research into the preservation of flesh against putrefaction is a story

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

178

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 178

Travis D. Smith

so fit it’s foul.37 It is possible, however unlikely, that he hoped to be personally saved from death and what may follow. That he planned on being revived at some later date if only he were satisfactorily preserved is somewhat more probable (cf. W III:159, V:317). Let us instead attribute to him a more modest dream: to save deserving men—his brethren—from death sometime in the distant future. To this end, he would steal from God now in order to steal from Satan later.

X If there is no God, there is no reason not to feign prayers and prophecy, and many reasons to give it a whirl.38 Pretending to speak for a god that one does not believe in is like offering oneself to a devil that one is convinced is not real. If there is no God, all prophets (exempting psychotics) are conscious of being frauds, making the category of “false prophet” redundant. Prophets must then be assessed in terms of the quality of the lies they compose. The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26).39 But how? A single-minded devotion to the prolongation of one’s own life is certain to be an existence in which misery is but protracted and intensified.40 No one even seemingly wise would want to cheat death and live forever in bodies like those that men now have in the world as they know it. Some kind of self-annihilation is imperative in order to enjoy eternal life. How much of himself must a man wash away so as to live well with himself forever? Having become already so corrupt, it is doubtful that any man would judge well of what within himself needs cleansing. Baconian ambition is premised on an all-or-nothing situation. It gives men an excuse to gamble everything, since failure at any point along the way is equivalent to not having tried. They have nothing to lose that is not already lost.41 Bacon encourages a neurotic pursuit of a nebulous whatmay-be, maybe. The form that the final success of his project would take is unpredictable, if not inconceivable. It is not simply that the future is always in motion. It is difficult to see how the imperfect could engender the perfect, or how a part could accumulate and wield power sufficient to master the whole, especially through induction, however methodical. Being imperfect, however, man may well be convinced that he can perfect himself, leading him to embrace some simulacra of perfection, like counterfeit gold (W IV:122), as a substitute. Bacon’s philosophy tells an ignoble lie from the perspective of the outlook that it would overturn.42 It swears that men will be better off for leaving humanity behind, even if they never become truly superhuman. In im-

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 179

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

179

itation of Christ, Bacon may be anticipating a kind of kingdom, power, and glory for himself, forever and ever, even if nobody is actually saved from death by following him.43 Bacon pushes men to be bad in order to become better off, even though they will never become altogether good. Prudence includes setting one’s aim too high (P VI:22) and choosing the lesser imperfection (P XXI:91). Failing at the inherently impossible Baconian project is reckoned preferable to submitting to its fundamental alternative, which becomes worse the more it succeeds. To keep the endeavor alive, however, credulity regarding the possibility of achieving the furthermost goals of science is needful. The Fathers of Salomon’s House show no signs of giving up after centuries of trying. They are believers, not in the unorthodox Christianity of Bensalem, which they themselves contrived, but in the Baconian premise and promise.44 Serious misgivings regarding the project’s capacity to reach its objectives would threaten to plunge mankind headlong into nihilism, especially after rival worldviews have been swept away.

XI To conclude, I must set aside an assessment of how well Bacon executes or deviates from Machiavelli’s orders.45 If the Lord Chancellor were an apprentice of a teacher of evil,46 he would have undoubtedly aimed to supplant his master—who, in turn, would have foreseen this and encouraged it (D I.30.1). Furthermore, whether or not Bacon’s teaching is genuinely good for some or all men, or even for the entities that men will become or create on the basis of it, is a question of an altogether higher order. The historical unfolding of modern science has been far more reckless, impatient, sidetracked, and slapdash than Bacon intended. Later operatives in Machiavelli’s service labored to channel modern progress in more liberal, democratic, republican, and commercial directions, spawning a rich and enticing bounty of “golden apples” (W III:222, III:247, III:498, IV:71, IV:105, VI:744) after which men chase rather than staying on target. Men have flocked to modern science seeking their salvation, but they never did believe that it is crucial to follow the way there that Bacon gave to them all that faithfully. Off track, running this race becomes (very) very dangerous. Incautious experiments or unfortunate inventions begotten of aloof men out of sheer curiosity can be as destructive as the wicked designs of mad scientists and rogue states with delusions of grandeur. Bacon was not oblivious to the tremendous peril that accompanies a commitment to technological advancement (W VI:734–36),47 but the burden of assuming that risk was, to him, light. And so forevermore, all men must hope that they will not perish because he so loved the world.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

180

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 180

Travis D. Smith

NOTES Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Montreal British History Seminar on 15 February 2007 at the invitation of Brian Lewis and Robert Tittler and at the 2007 Pacific Northwest Renaissance Conference in Calgary. This chapter draws in part on the research conducted for my dissertation, “On the Generation of New Natures” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2005), which was supervised by Harvey C. Mansfield, with Richard Tuck and Sharon R. Krause, and supported by an H. B. Earhart Fellowship and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship. Conversations with Oona Eisenstadt, Badr El Fekkak, David Fott, Ed King, Mary Ann McGrail, N. Jessica Reifer, Kathryn Sensen, Katherine R. Smith, Marlene Sokolon, and John von Heyking have aided in the preparation of this chapter. All remaining blunders are my own. 1. See Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the “Discourses on Livy” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 295–96 (hereafter referenced as MNMO); Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 121 (hereafter referenced as MV). Bacon ambivalently describes Machiavelli’s teaching as evil (W I:789, III:471, V:75, VI:470) yet wise (W III:348, III:453), affirming that “we are much beholden to” him (W III:430, V:17). Primary sources used in this chapter are abbreviated as follows: W

F

D P

Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols., ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (1857–1874; rpt. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag Günther Holzboog, 1961–1963). Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on Its Development from 1603 to 1609 with New Translations of Fundamental Texts (1964; rpt. Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1966). Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

2. D I.26, I.27. On Bacon’s Machiavellian utopianism (despite P XV:61), see Richard Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), 12–13. 3. In Weinberger’s assessment, “Bacon was one of the nastiest characters in the history of philosophy, did not have a charitable bone in his body, and thought charity to be nonsense,” adding, “He was a coldly prudent, selfish, and calculating man.” Jerry Weinberger, “What’s at the Bottom of the Slippery Slope: A Post-Human Future?” Perspectives on Political Science 32(2) (Spring 2003): 93. According to a more generous appraisal, “Bacon was not vicious by nature. His moral disposition was the reverse of diabolical. It was in the highest degree facile, and therefore frail . . . it was easily corruptible.” Kuno Fischer, Francis Bacon of Verulam: Realistic Philosophy and Its Age, trans. John Oxenford (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1857), 16.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 181

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

181

4. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), VI.7. 5. Plato, The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 368b, 586e. A man of perfect justice would receive bad press daily picturing him as a menace. Even his friendliest neighbor would find his apparent hypocrisy amazing, perceiving him as “leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.” Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 5th ed. (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 2003), 378. 6. Mansfield, MV, xv. Modern man, by design, is not good at making or being friends. See Travis D. Smith, “Hobbes on Getting By with Little Help from Friends,” in Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought, ed. John von Heyking and Richard Avramenko (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 214–47. Autonomous individuality, the fetish of contemporary liberalism, resembles the fantasy of every tyrannical type: to be empowered to do whatever I want, call it good, and have no one tell me otherwise. 7. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 156. 8. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, new ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 440, 464–68. 9. Tacitus, The Annals, trans. John Jackson, in Tacitus in Five Volumes, vol. 4, Loeb Classical Library, ed. E. H. Warmington (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), IV.i, IV.lix. 10. See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II.10–11. 11. Apologies to Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), II.2.1. 12. Consider Donnie Darko, Tyler Durden, and Dark Willow, respectively. It has been suggested that women especially know not how to be altogether bad. Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 12, 239–40. Feminine wiles, pride, and modesty ought to answer this allegation with harmonious silence. 13. St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1984), I.8, XIII.5–6, XX.2. 14. St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Jean Oesterle (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), XVI.3. 15. Cf. Mansfield, MNMO, 298, 311, 395; Strauss, Machiavelli, 47. Nothing would please the devil more than widespread agreement regarding his nonexistence. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (London: Penguin, 1997), 12. 16. Monsters are only marvels “misliked.” Cf. Hobbes, XIX.2. 17. Cf. Plato, The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle (1980; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 888e–890a. 18. As an alien entity supernaturally conjoined to the body, the rational soul Bacon describes has a Gnostic flavor and prefigures the Cartesian construct, departing

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

182

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 182

Travis D. Smith

from classical and Christian accounts. On Bacon’s handling of souls as an abuse of Scripture, see Joseph de Maistre, An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon Wherein Different Questions of Rational Philosophy Are Treated, ed. and trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), II.2. 19. In the exact center of the Star Wars prequels, the protagonist learns that his mother has been abducted by desert-dwelling “monsters” that “walk like men.” At this precise moment, overwhelmed by fear and anger, he “start[s] down the dark path.” Unwilling to accept that “sometimes there are things no one can fix,” he promises to become all-powerful and “learn how to stop people from dying.” This journey begins by slaughtering children “like animals.” 20. What about undoing the past? The biblical God forgoes this power. Christ’s wounds are held eternal. Given that men and women often choose to eliminate tiny but inconvenient consequences of accidents past, we may rightly ask which infants we would destroy if only we could turn the world back along its temporal axis. Now, imagine being capable of meddling with creation at its zero hour, experimenting upon infinite earths until you generated a perfect world. 21. Bacon describes a technique for generating “celestial bodies” in miniature (W II:352–53). The Royal Society could not replicate his results. Graham Rees, “The Fate of Bacon’s Cosmology in the Seventeenth Century,” Ambix 24 (1) (March 1977): 29. The significance of Bacon’s proposals is, however, often located in what they portend. Although the outlined protocol fails, Bacon successfully arouses the experimentally inclined to try manufacturing something heavenly here on earth. 22. Bacon asserts that the greatest “discoveries” of science “confer benefits without causing harm or sorrow to any,” and then promptly lists gunpowder among them (W IV:113–14). Contending that Bacon only ever meant to help ordinary people, a recent commentator exonerates him, declaring, “It makes no historical sense, therefore, to blame him for the undesirable and unintended consequences that ensued from science’s effort to understand and control nature.” Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 123. This charitable absolution uncharitably accuses Bacon of being far too trusting and suffering from lack of vision. 23. Jerry Weinberger, Science, Faith, and Politics: Francis Bacon and the Utopian Roots of the Modern Age: A Commentary on Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 300. 24. Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 128–30. Bacon uses subversive gendered language in ways that our subversive feminist interpreters miss, having contracted tunnel vision through their peculiar manner of penetrating history. See, for example, Carolyn Merchant, “Dominion over Nature,” in The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 164–90. Salomon’s House explicitly employs women (W III:165), and there is no principled reason why the rank of Father should be attained by biological males exclusively. Scientists are only metaphorically male, in that their progeny are partus masculi (W III:527). Intimating a conception of artificial wombs (W II:383, III:161, V:369), Bacon implies that feminine births need not remain an unfair encumbrance (or exclusive privilege) native to the fairer sex. Reversing the Fall (W IV:247–48) means emancipating women from their subjugation. Ideally, the “true Sons of Science” (F 88) would be post-sexual beings.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 183

Being Altogether Bad, Becoming Altogether Good

183

25. Consider the fallout of the Magnificent Lorenzo’s terminal illness. Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, trans. Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), VIII.36. With respect to Cesare Borgia’s ill-timed illness (P VII:32), the duke’s underlying sickness was metaphorical. Its symptoms included carelessness in allowing himself to be poisoned, especially alongside his father, and lack of foresight with respect to Julius II, whose enmity he should have anticipated and averted. 26. Burgeoning embryonic stem cell therapies are a far cry from the vampiric practices Bacon recounts (W II:625, V:307). Embryos are much, much smaller than the victims of vampires, they have no voice with which to withhold their consent, and their advantages may be extracted without any unsavory biting or sucking. 27. Bacon recommends undergoing diseases deliberately if surviving them makes one stronger (W V:231, V:265). 28. Cf. Ralph Lerner, “The Jihād of St. Alban,” Review of Politics 64 (1) (Winter 2002): 24–25. 29. The craven and the stubborn alike will find the products of science irresistible. Salomon’s House is prepared to make offers to all men that they either won’t or can’t refuse (W III:163). 30. According to natural reason, “the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except) will not seem much other than an ant-hill . . . all to and fro a little heap of dust” (W III:314, cf. VI:403, VI:414). But mortal man “should [not] regard himself as dust and ashes.” Strauss, Machiavelli, 190 (my emphasis). 31. Echoing, arguably, a golden oldie. See Stanley Rosen, Plato’s “Republic”: A Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 9. 32. The sincerity of Bacon’s piety receives emphatic attestation in Stephen A. McKnight, The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006). 33. Presupposing that human beings cannot become all-powerful, pious men abstain from much of the evildoing occasioned by the pursuit of omnipotence. Mansfield, MNMO, 191. Bacon tempts men to attempt anything, especially the “hitherto unattempted,” because they cannot know and must not presume that they are ultimately impotent (W V:267, cf. IV:48, IV:391). 34. Witness Bacon’s spectacular stab at dispatching a host of old authorities in philosophy and medicine in rapid-fire succession in The Masculine Birth of Time (F 61–72; cf. P VIII:34–37). 35. Practicing medicine is the most Christlike activity, Bacon observes (W III:373, IV:379, VII:244). And in the eleventh of the Essays, he directs man to “be partaker of God’s theatre,” specifically referencing Genesis 1:31, where God “vidit quod omnia essent bona nimis” (W VI:399). God only sees that His creation is “very good” (instead of simply “good”) after He makes man (male and female). In remodeling the heavens and the earth, man should above all re-imagine man (and woman). 36. On Baconian ingratitude, see Robert K. Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), 133; Howard B. White, Antiquity Forgot: Essays on Shakespeare, Bacon, and Rembrandt (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 131. 37. The received gospel proclaiming the circumstances surrounding Bacon’s demise is an apt myth fabricated to conceal an addict’s overdose. Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (1998; rpt. London: Phoenix, 1999), 502–11. That he dies on Easter Sunday, however, is divine.

08_540_09_Ch08.qxd

184

11/19/08

5:37 AM

Page 184

Travis D. Smith

38. Don’t underestimate man’s capacity to feign prayer. Men and women around the world face each other and do it every day, time and time and time and time and time again, whether to acquire power, keep it, or simply survive among those who wield it, as well as for considerations of pride and honor. 39. Murdering but one pope is insufficiently good when the entire Roman Church merits demolition. Mansfield, MNMO, 12 (cf. P VII:33). Cures for this or that malady may be viewed analogously. 40. Plato, Republic, 406a–b. 41. Whereas the fallen angels in Book II of Milton’s Paradise Lost know that they do not know whether or not they have nothing to lose by rebelling some more, the lonely and fearless man who figures that nothing matters once he is gone may treat everything that is as already lost in the endeavor to save himself. It is comical (provided that it does not prove tragic) when those who celebrate the transience of all things pontificate in all sincerity, preaching universalistic moral absolutes and mandating the solemnest concern for future generations. It may well be that man’s religious sensibilities cannot be abolished (Hobbes, XII.23). If men are destined to be reduced to democratic pantheism (Tocqueville, II.1.7), then environmentalism predictably becomes their holiest creed. It augurs an imminent, immanent apocalypse for having offended an angry Earth. Her devotees have their own cant, mantras, icons, artifacts, totems, and taboos. They make sacrifices and regulate the minutest details of their daily behavior so as to stay Her wrath. They make pilgrimages, proselytize, honor Her priests, persecute dissenters, and shun the ungreen. The enthusiasts of this global cult cannot, however, fully account for their veneration of the biosphere and the variegated species inhabiting it without unveiling their anthropocentric premises. 42. In contrast, by Machiavellian reasoning, attributing to man a noble origin and inestimable intrinsic worth only perpetuates his misery. Mansfield, MNMO, 276. 43. Faulkner, Progress, 275–76. Just how close do Platonists come to beholding “the sun itself by itself in its own region”? Plato, Republic, 516b. 44. Cf. Plato, Republic, 414c. Bacon convinces scientists that theirs is the highest calling. Does he suppress a grin when he instructs these exalted men to “proceed with sagacity of mind” when analyzing “Winds in the bodies of men” who consume “matter which yields a tenacious vapour . . . as beans” (W V:195)? 45. See Mansfield, MV, 122. We may speak of “Bacon’s Humanitarian Revision of Machiavelli.” Kennington, Modern Origins, 57–77. Machiavelli himself, however, already knows that “humanism is not enough.” Strauss, Machiavelli, 78. Reading Bacon’s humanitarianism as a means to ultra-humanist ends, his revision of Machiavelli presents itself as an application, all dressed up nice, as is fitting. 46. A man can have Machiavelli as a teacher without having him as a master. An altogether Machiavellian professor would have acted so that even if he could not have a university president that suited him, he would have kept someone unsuitable from becoming president. 47. See Heidi D. Studer, “Francis Bacon on the Political Dangers of Scientific Progress,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 31 (2) (June 1998): L 219–34.

9 Hobbes’s Clockwork The State of Nature and Machiavelli’s Return to the Beginnings of Cities Ioannis D. Evrigenis

One who reads The Prince and Discourses on Livy may be excused for thinking, at first, that the two books are different to the point where one contradicts the other. Machiavelli gives his reader ample reason to think so from the start. Take, for instance, the epistles dedicatory. Whereas in the one he fulfills every expectation regarding the way in which a lowly subject ought to present a book to his sovereign, in the other he makes a point of repudiating that practice, and declares, “I have chosen not those who are princes but those who for their infinite good parts deserve to be” (D Ep.Ded., 3).1 Machiavelli does not spell out the reasons why Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai deserve to be princes, but it may well be because they spend their time discussing the art of war, for they are among the interlocutors in Machiavelli’s eponymous work.2 If it is true, however, that a prince “should have no other object, nor any other thought, nor take anything else as his art but that of war” (P XIV: 58), and that Buondelmonti and Rucellai deserve to be princes, then the opening of the Discourses makes for strange reading, for, as Harvey Mansfield notes, Machiavelli’s “discussion of building and choosing a site seems so notably un-Machiavellian, with almost all of the nastiness, cruelty, and confusion suppressed.”3 This impression, in turn, may well be due to the fact that Machiavelli has decided to “take a path as yet untrodden by anyone,” a path that will yield “new modes and orders” (D I Pref. §1). The difficulty of the journey and the potential deficiencies in his talent, experience, and knowledge, make his task a challenging one, and Machiavelli recognizes that in the end he may fail to bring it to completion. At the very least, however, he hopes to “show the path to someone who with more virtue, more discourse and judgment,” may be able to fulfill his intention (D I Pref. §1). That his disclaimer is offered in the first paragraph of a 185

186

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

preface, and one of dubious standing at that, makes it tempting to wish to discount it, but such a temptation ought to be resisted because Machiavelli returns to it at the end of the preface.4 There, his tone is quite different, and his promise humbler: “Although this enterprise may be difficult, nonetheless, aided by those who have encouraged me to accept this burden, I believe I can carry it far enough so that a short road will remain for another to bring it to the destined place” (D I Pref. §2). Machiavelli’s preface to Book I of the Discourses is replete with proof of his inability to appear modest even when he pretends to be trying. From the outset, he makes it clear that he is not shy about the magnitude of his undertaking, nor about the potential benefits to be reaped from his “new modes and orders” (D I Pref. §1). In this context, one admission of incompetence would seem strange but could nevertheless be dismissed as a bow to literary convention. His choice to close the preface with a second, stronger, admission of the same kind, however, is suspicious. Machiavelli’s curious acknowledgments of the limits of his new modes and orders are far from accidental. They are indicative, rather, of a deep understanding of the extent of his contribution. Thus it may not be entirely surprising, for more reasons than one, to claim that in his expressions of humility Machiavelli is simultaneously lying and telling the truth. He is lying, or at least being excessively modest, because it is clear, if only from the reaction, that his counsel is innovative, provocative, and that it marks some type of break with tradition. His choice to re-found political science by emphasizing the recurring need to return to the beginnings of states, where “fear is renewed in their spirits” (D III.1§3) and their goodness and strength are at their highest, has had a profound impact on thinking about politics.5 Itself a founding, it has forced all subsequent commentators to adjust their language, understanding, and thinking. Machiavelli is also telling the truth, however. His new modes and orders cannot be the destined place because there is no single destined place for all. This realization is a consequence of the nature of his political advice. If it is a fact of life that it will be perpetually necessary to return to the beginnings of states every now and then, no single return, not even Machiavelli’s, will suffice.

THE DUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF BEGINNINGS Comprehensive theories of politics cannot avoid dealing, if only implicitly, with the questions of human nature and the beginnings of cities.6 At the beginning of his own project, Machiavelli bows to tradition momentarily, by proposing a classification of cities (D I.1§§1–4) and acknowledging that, human nature being what it is, “there is greater virtue to be seen where choice has less authority” (D I.1§4). Yet moments later he reveals his intention to

Hobbes’s Clockwork

187

stick to his promise of innovation. While it may be true that it is necessary to constrain choice in order to prevent idleness and discord, attempting to do so by choosing a barren site and setting one’s men to work is shortsighted, for such a choice fails to consider two additional characteristics of human nature: that men are not “content to live off their own” and that they “wish to seek to command others” (D I.1§4). To ensure that it is set up properly, therefore, the wise founder will opt for a fertile site, so that the state can expand and these needs can be met (D I.1§§4–5). The dangers of excessive leisure and disorder arising from such a site are best dealt with by means of the laws. These can impose enough artificial necessity upon the inhabitants of the new city to allow them to remain focused on their common endeavors (D I.1§4). As to the classification of states, it turns out that the criteria on which it is based are irrelevant, so long as the beginning is a “free” one, as was that of Rome.7 But how does one make a free beginning when it comes to political knowledge? Machiavelli’s answer to this question is once again something of a riddle, since his own attempt appears to be heavily dependent on others. It is, after all, advertised as a set of reflections on Livy’s account of the founding of Rome, and is thus at least twice removed from the original. Are we to take his method as a sign that he has opted for a fertile site himself? In the Preface to Book I of the Discourses, Machiavelli gives us a hint at the answer. His contemporaries, he tells us, manage to get their relationship with the ancients wrong in every possible way. When it comes to the arts, they revere ancient artifacts, use them as signs of honor, and imitate them uncritically at every opportunity. When it comes to histories, they read them for pleasure, but do not probe them to discover even a sign of ancient virtue that might be applicable to their predicament (D I Pref. §2). This tendency strikes him as lamentable and strange given their readiness to take legal and medical knowledge—themselves bequests from the past—seriously. In Book I of the Discourses, Machiavelli puts these principles to work, and the result is a rather strange one. It may well be that something new is happening in those pages, but it is not entirely clear what that might be. Alongside frequent examples of adherence to custom, the reader finds several instances of curious practices, likely hints that something unusual is afoot. For instance, it is remarkable how little of Livy there is in the beginning, given his presence in the very title of the work. Between the beginning of Book I and Chapter 15, Livy makes an appearance—direct or indirect—a mere nine times.8 And yet, as one begins to settle into Machiavelli’s idiosyncratic approach to commentary, Livy makes a comeback. In the second half of Book I, Machiavelli suddenly begins to quote from Livy, as though he himself has grown tired of this untrodden path and is ready to join his contemporaries in their comfortable reliance on authority.10 Does this mean that he is ready to abandon the principles he appeared to espouse at the beginning of the work?

188

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

The beginning of the Preface to Book II certainly reinforces such an impression. Having berated those who fail to pay attention to the ancients and embarked upon what he led us to believe would be a new, profitable, reading of an ancient history, Machiavelli now claims that “Men always praise ancient times—but not always reasonably—and accuse the present” (D II Pref. § 1). This opinion, he tells us, is “most often” false, and this for a series of reasons. Not only do readers fail to understand the truth about ancient things, but there are also certain forces working against them. Authors often conceal unpleasant facts and exaggerate others that are deemed likely to bring glory to ancient times. One does not experience fear and envy—the causes of hatred—when it comes to past events, so it becomes impossible to hate the past, but it is not too hard to hate the present. Therein lies the chief difference between the histories and artifacts that Machiavelli spoke of in the Preface to Book I. Subsequent generations can see for themselves the statues and paintings of times past, and judge them more or less on their own merits, being little affected by their contemporaries’ views. A beautiful Baroque painting can touch a spectator in the age of Impressionism, despite the fact that it is not in vogue. This, for Machiavelli, is art’s clarity, a clarity that ancient histories lack (D II Pref. §1). Praising and blaming are no simple matters. Thus, those who blame the present and praise the past are not always and by definition right or wrong. Rather, because the world is in motion and human affairs either ascend or descend, it is necessary to have a correct sense of where one stands, up or down, before one can pass judgment on the relative standing of one’s epoch. Machiavelli finds that the world contains the same amount of good and evil at any given moment as at any other. What variation one sees is due to the fluctuation of good and evil from one province to another. Thus, according to his own examples, a sixteenth century Florentine and Greek have good reasons to praise the past and blame the present (D II Pref. § 2). These problems make the evaluation of the past problematic, but they are only the tip of the iceberg, since they presuppose a fixed observer. As Machiavelli points out, human beings are also plagued by the transformation of their own points of view, as they progress from youth to old age. Vigor gives way to judgment and prudence, and tastes change as the body and mind grow old. These transitions are constantly vitiated by an insatiable appetite, matched only by an ability to attain little. It is no wonder, then, that men “blame the present, praise the past, and desire the future, even if they are not moved to do this by any reasonable cause” (D II Pref. §3).10 How is one to treat this barrage of arguments against his very enterprise? After all, this is the same author who did not hesitate to liken himself to Columbus and Vespucci. To those who might rush to condemn him for doing exactly that which he dismisses, Machiavelli replies by taking refuge behind the glaring contrast of past to present: “And truly, if the virtue that then

Hobbes’s Clockwork

189

used to reign and the vice that now reigns were not clearer than the sun, I would go on speaking with more restraint [ . . . ]” (D II Pref. §3). Rome’s virtue, however, is “so manifest that everyone sees it” (D II Pref. §3).11 Yet this response too begs the question. If the contrast between the past and present is there for all to see, then why do his contemporaries fail to see it and put it to good use (D I Pref. §2)? To this question Machiavelli provides no answer. He does, however, close the Preface to Book II by returning to those mysterious confessions of the limits to his project. This time, he tells us that it is the “malignity of the times and of fortune” that prevents this good man from acting on his advice, but that it is his duty, nonetheless, to teach others, “so that when many are capable of it, someone of them more loved by heaven may be able to work it” (D II Pref. §3). By the end of Book II, the reader of the Discourses is not surprised to find that Machiavelli keeps some of his promises and breaks others. Having divided his topic into four parts (D I.1 §6), and devoted Book I to the first part (public internal) and Book II to the second (public external), Machiavelli decides that the remaining two parts will be treated in a single book, a book without a preface. The absence of a preface in Book III, a fact evident even to the most casual of readers, is so conspicuous as to cause one to wonder whether Chapter 1 might have some special significance. Such an impression is confirmed by the fact that the heading of that chapter advises, “If One Wishes a Sect or a Republic to Live Long, It Is Necessary to Draw It Back Often toward Its Beginning.” A new beginning, then, in the cycle of the Discourses, that contains a departure from the customary, a substantive concern with beginnings, and a promise to impart further knowledge regarding necessity—a formative factor that Machiavelli has singled out but never treated fully—and regarding the longevity of republics and sects, something that one is tempted, frequently, to identify as one of the elusive goals of Machiavelli’s political science. At the start of Book II, Machiavelli stated that human things are always in motion, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, but that that was not the whole story. In beginning Book III, he notes that even though all worldly things die, one can maximize their life spans either by not altering them or by ensuring that alterations contribute to their safety rather than to their harm. This seemingly vacuous advice turns out to have a specific meaning, for alterations will be unavoidable, and when it comes to the lives of “mixed bodies,” such as republics and sects, alterations for safety are those that take them “back toward their beginnings” (D III.1 §1). That these types of bodies will not last unless thus renewed, proclaims Machiavelli, is yet another “thing clearer than light,” and his explanation certainly makes it seem so. Mixed bodies begin with a strength that enables them to take off, yet the process overall, for all its ups and downs, is one of decay. The passage of time tends to weigh bodies down, and in this sense bodies politic are no different than human bodies (D III.1 §2).12

190

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

Such a “renewal” can take place either by means of internal “prudence” or by some external accident. The Gallic invasion of Rome exemplifies the latter in every way. Machiavelli argues that this otherwise unfortunate affair was “necessary” if Rome were to “regain new life and new virtue, and regain the observance of religion and justice, which were beginning to be tainted in it” (D II. §2). Internal prudence, on the other hand, manifests itself in two ways, either in a law that checks the men who compose that body frequently, or “indeed from a good man who arises among them, who with his examples and his virtuous works produces the same effect as the order” (D III.1 §2). It turns out, however, that even good orders require the assistance of a good man, whose virtue can bring them to life and render them effective against those who transgress them (D III.1 §3). Machiavelli lists some characteristic examples of such interventions by virtuous statesmen from Livy’s history of Rome, and adds that, in his native Florence, the Medici held that it was necessary to regain the state every five years, if one wished to hold on to it. By this, they meant “putting that terror and fear in men that had been put there in taking it.”13 Yet, Machiavelli repeats that it is possible to achieve such a return to the beginnings through the “simple virtue of one man,” one whose example is compelling (D III.1 §3). Could this be the same man of virtue whose advent Machiavelli had announced twice, at the start of the book (D I Pref. §§1, 2)? Machiavelli’s approval of the “external beating” that the Gauls gave Rome sounds like an endorsement of extrinsic accidents, but in the end his assessment is far more sober. He warns that even though on occasion such an external force is “the best remedy, as it was in Rome, it is so dangerous that it is not in any way to be desired” (D III.1 §6). This conclusion should come as no surprise. Not only is this mode of renewal heavily dependent on others, but it also exposes the state in question to an unacceptable risk of annihilation.14 What, then, is a statesman to do? If the best means of affecting a return to the beginnings of cities is also the most dangerous, caution would dictate that he settle for second best.15 That second best option, however, comes with its own limitations. Not only is it not as effective as “external beatings,” but it requires the convergence of forces that are far from easy to produce. A good set of orders will not suffice, if it is not backed by a virtuous individual, and placing all one’s eggs in such an unlikely basket would be a sign of the most un-Machiavellian lack of prudence.16 Machiavelli offers the solution to this problem in Book III, that curious marriage of two parts that he had led us to believe would be treated separately (D I.1 §6, II Pref. §3). As a result of his elaboration in III.1, we know that the return to the beginnings of cities is important because it recreates the state of mind that prevailed then, a state of mind that is always conducive to order.17 It is no surprise, then, that Book III is replete with psychological advice, with counsel on such matters as perception, fraud, opin-

Hobbes’s Clockwork

191

ion, madness, impressions, and deception, to name but a few. This much is clear, then: one seeking to return a state to its beginnings must find a way to recreate the frame of mind that was present at that time, and the way to achieve this recreation lies in the virtuous combination of the internal and external, following Machiavelli’s example in Book III.

A GOOD MAN AND HIS VIRTUOUS WORKS In pronouncing true the maxims, “Man is a God to man” and “Man is a wolf to Man,” at the outset of De cive, Hobbes declares his intention to follow the example set by Machiavelli and consider the relations of citizens inside a commonwealth alongside those between commonwealths. The mere pairing of internal and external might well be a coincidence, but the way in which Hobbes describes them gives away his source of inspiration. Man shows some likeness to God, Hobbes argues, when he behaves justly and charitably toward his fellows. Beyond the protective sphere of the commonwealth, however, “the wickedness of bad men compels the good too to have recourse, for their own protection, to the virtues of war, which are violence and fraud” (DC Ep. Ded. §2).18 How else might one come to deem it acceptable to speak of violence and fraud as virtues, and in so overt a manner? Beyond this clearly Machiavellian vocabulary, Hobbes also treats in his prefatory material many of the issues that Machiavelli addressed at the start of the Discourses. Though he disagrees with his predecessor on a number of counts, he also shares an interest in the way the present views, and makes use of, the past. He, too, notes the significance of ancient histories (DC Ep. Ded. §3), as well as the fact that “a man now approves what at another time he condemns,” and does not hesitate to declare that “there is no greater knowledge [scientia] of natural right and natural laws today than in the past” (DC Ep. Ded. §7).19 By far the most noteworthy of his Machiavellisms, however, is his interest in points of departure. For Hobbes, this interest is an essential part of the proper approach to the scientific investigation of politics. Thus, the starting point of a science [scientia] cannot be set at any point we choose as in a circle. In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light; that is where the starting point for teaching is; that is where we must find our illumination as we direct our course to clear away doubts (DC Ep. Ded. §8).20

Hobbes’s description of his starting point almost passes unnoticed. After all, the contrast between darkness and light is a common enough metaphor; Machiavelli himself uses it frequently in the Discourses (e.g., D II Pref., III.1). This seemingly innocuous description, however, belies the

192

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

depth to which he must descend in order to find his thread of reason. One familiar with the call for a return to the beginnings of cities might read Hobbes as merely emulating Machiavelli, as seeking to find a starting point, that is, at the founding, where there is darkness and it is not easy to see. Machiavelli, for one, knows this well, since even though he stands upon the shoulders of Livy and discourses on the greatest of states, he acknowledges often that there are matters about the founding of Rome that have yet to be settled.21 Yet seeking a single and proper starting point, Hobbes descended further still, and went to a state so dark that the thread of reason shines by contrast. In that state, the state of nature, Hobbes “obtained two absolutely certain postulates of human nature:” human greed and the desire to avoid violent death (DC Ep. Ded. §10). Hobbes’s need to locate the true beginning prior to the founding stems from a distinctly Machiavellian concern, the problems surrounding the proper interpretation of ancient bequests. Machiavelli had justified his Discourses as an attempt to read the ancients properly and extract the right lessons from their histories (D I Pref., II Pref.). He counseled that one ought to approach ancient history with caution because of distortions introduced by the interference of the understandable human tendencies of authors and readers alike. Though Hobbes by no means disagrees, he goes one step further. The matter is of such importance, he argues, that ancient authors have seen fit to hide their teachings about the “high and holy mystery of government” so as to prevent them from “being contaminated by the debates of private men” (DC Pref. §§2–7). Nevertheless, his project remains thoroughly Machiavellian. He notes that opinions which jeopardize order “arise every day,” so that a remedy will have to be applied again and again, perhaps even more frequently than the Medici’s periodic returns to the beginning would lead one to expect. It is also a project based on radical contrasts. Some might think it enough to find a map showing the “royal road to peace,” but Hobbes counters that it is also necessary to show “the dark and shadowy ways of sedition.” He, then, will contrast one with another, “and nothing can be imagined more useful than that” (DC Pref. §8). The radical contrast between darkness and light, sedition and peace, contains the seeds of the answer to Machiavelli’s problem. As it turns out, Machiavelli was not being overly modest when he declared that he would only be able to take his project so far, and that someone else would have to complete it. His curious modesty concealed a deep awareness that the need for rejuvenation never ceases so long as a state continues to exist, which means that no one individual, no matter how insightful, can continue to be the engine of every new return to the beginning.22 Some contributions, however, are more lasting than others, and his own made it indeed possible for another to take his enterprise to the “destined place” (D I Pref. §2). In describing his own method, Hobbes shows that he has grasped the sig-

Hobbes’s Clockwork

193

nificance of Machiavelli’s recommendation, but also that he has found a way to provide that more lasting solution. The usual procedure “though clear, would not suffice by itself,” which is why Hobbes chose to “begin with the matter of which a commonwealth is made and go on to how it comes into being and the form it takes, and to the first origin of justice” (DC Pref. §9). This sequence sounds like a logical and temporal progression from one step to another, except that the first step is a step backwards. This move is reflected in the choice to deal with the components of a commonwealth rather than, for example, human beings. That this distinction is significant becomes apparent immediately, as Hobbes likens his method to clockwork: As in an automatic Clock or other fairly complex device, one cannot get to know the function of each part and wheel unless one takes it apart, and examines separately the material, shape and motion of the parts, so in investigating the right of a commonwealth and the duties of its citizens, there is need, not indeed to take the commonwealth apart, but to view it as taken apart, i.e. to understand what human nature is like, and in what features it is suitable and in what unsuitable to construct a commonwealth, and how men who want to grow together must be connected (DC Pref. §9, emphasis added).

The first step of Hobbes’s sequence is thus the commonwealth itself, and the next step is a step backwards, a projection into a hypothetical workshop in which this complex device has been taken apart so that the nature and interaction of its constitutive parts can be studied.23 His explanation also signals the nature of his solution. Machiavelli noted that returns to the beginnings of cities are valuable for their psychological consequences—they return individuals to a frame of mind that is conducive to order (D III.1 §3). Hobbes’s distinction between taking the commonwealth apart and viewing it as taken apart opens the door to the possibility of recreating the psychology of order without the messy reshuffling, dependence on virtuous individuals, and other dangers that Machiavelli’s solutions imply.24 Once Hobbes takes the first step of his descent, he discovers “a Principle well known to all men by experience and which everyone admits, that men’s natural Disposition is such that if they are not restrained by fear of a common power, they will distrust and fear each other, and each man rightly may, and necessarily will, look out for himself from his own resources” (DC Pref. § 10). Hobbes knows that many will question the validity of his discovery, but in true Machiavellian fashion he declares that the proof lies in men’s actions, rather than their proclamations. The protective measures taken by individuals and princes alike show that where the fear of a supreme authority is absent, one best be on one’s guard. Touchy readers will rush to take offense at this assessment, but for Hobbes the question whether it follows that human beings are evil by

194

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

nature is irrelevant. What matters is that even if the evil are few, one has no clear way of knowing who they are. Add to this the natural human vulnerabilities to “greed, fear, anger and all the other animal passions from nature,” and the combination is more than sufficient to render anyone apprehensive (DC Pref. §§12–13). If all this were true and so easy to see, however, what need would there be of the kinds of elusive psychological remedies that Machiavelli and Hobbes are after? Echoing Machiavelli, and perhaps excluding him from this judgment, Hobbes explains that the problem lies in the fact that “[t]he majority of previous writers in public Affairs either assume or seek to prove or simply assert that Man is an animal born fit for Society,” and proceed to offer their theories of government “as if no more were necessary for the preservation of peace and the governance of the whole human race than for men to give their consent to certain agreements and conditions which, without further thought, these writers call laws.” Despite its wide appeal, Hobbes finds this axiom false, as it is based on a “superficial view of human nature” (DC I.2). Following Thucydides, Hobbes attributes human interaction principally to fear, honor, and profit.25 By drawing attention to these motives, Hobbes hopes to convince his readers that obedience to a supreme power is necessary because, in its absence, the natural condition of mankind is a “war of all men against all men,” a “miserable and hateful state” that everyone will wish to leave (DC Pref. §14). That Hobbes’s case for the undesirability of the state of nature and the resulting desirability of the ordered commonwealth had a considerable psychological impact on its readers is beyond dispute. Toward the end of his life, Hobbes declared that it was De cive that made him famous, and the length and tone of the Preface and notes he added to the second edition offer a sense of the reaction to the first.26 At the very end of that Preface, Hobbes apologizes to his readers if some of his expressions are sharper than necessary, yet a mere four years later, an interval that even Machiavelli and the Medici would have found too brief, Hobbes returned to give the natural condition of mankind another try.27 That most famous of treatments differs markedly from its predecessor not in substance but in tone and presentation. Therein, for example, the discussion of the natural equality of men is lengthier and far less schematic. De cive’s quick, matter-of-fact reference to the fragility of the human body and dismissal of the notion that anyone can believe himself superior to others by nature give way to more elaborate explorations of the various thought processes by which individuals such as those reading Leviathan weigh themselves and their prospects, and get into trouble. The mood is darker and less geometrical, and the reader has to think twice before quarreling with Hobbes’s contentions. Through that description, it becomes possible to begin to feel what it would be like to live in the state of nature, and to under-

Hobbes’s Clockwork

195

stand the source of diffidence. From there it is but a short distance to Leviathan’s more captivating description of the state of nature as a state of war. This reincarnation of an idea whose essence was also to be found in De cive (I.12) makes it possible to see why Hobbes had described the difference between the state of nature and the state of society as one between darkness and light. At best equal to all others, vulnerable to the designs of any one of them, diffident, and weary, the reader sits under the gathering clouds of the foul weather that is the state of war, and is now ready to understand why in the state of nature, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments for moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Lev. XIII §9).

A BARREN OR A FERTILE SITE? In the bleak setting that is the state of nature, Hobbes is able to introduce his revolutionary idea that the starting point of a consensus among beings whose interests are in conflict should be a summum malum rather than a summum bonum.28 This starting point is the one that is conspicuously absent from Machiavelli’s first, bloodless, discussion of the beginnings of cities (D I.1), the one that he eventually returns to (D III.1): the terror and fear of violent death (DC Ep. Ded. §10; Lev. XIII §9).29 Yet what success the image of the state of nature may have at first in instilling the fear that is necessary to regain the state seems to be mitigated by its apparent violation of Machiavelli’s very first piece of advice, namely that the founder disregard the tradition and choose a fertile rather than a barren site for his state. The state of nature, a site so barren as to make the mountains of Laconia pale by comparison, thus seems a shortsighted choice for the foundation of “that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH” (Lev. Intr. §1). Hobbes’s explanation of his method, in De cive, makes it clear that the descent into the state of nature is meant as a thought experiment, and yet it seems impossible not to think of it as some sort of attempt to describe actual events. Clearly aware of this tendency, Hobbes declares that “it was never generally so, over all the world” (Lev. XIII §11). Yet he notes that he intends the image as a metaphor for life in the absence of a “common power to fear” (Lev. XIII §11). Thus, there are plenty of manifestations of the state of nature, and he offers some by way of illustration. Such, he tells

196

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

us, is the life of “savage people in many places of America” (Lev. XIII §11; cf. EL I.14.12; DC I.13), as it was for many presently civilized nations, in antiquity (DC I.13, V.2). It is also the condition of individuals who disagree with one another radically (DC I.5, V.5; Lev. XVIII §9), as well as the situation of sovereign commonwealths vis-à-vis one another (Lev., XIII §12, XXX §30). More alarming, however, is the realization that such is the condition of man when he sleeps and his servants have the run of the house, or when he travels in the woods, where the arm of the law cannot protect him (DC Pref. §11; Lev., XIII §10). Paradoxically, then, Hobbes’s state of nature turns out to be barren and fertile at the same time. This is possible because even though it never existed, it can be found everywhere, and even though we know everything about how miserable it is, we really know very little else. Out of such a seemingly barren site, Hobbes extracts a multitude of meanings and images capable of feeding the imagination an endless number of reminders of the terror and fear that were present at the beginnings of cities.30 In so doing, he also takes Machiavelli’s advice against barren sites one step further by invoking their undesirability at every opportunity. His goal in this respect is to ensure that whenever the mind begins to race toward seditious thoughts, it will encounter a vision so reprehensible that it will be forced to turn back.31 Throughout the Discourses, in narrative and structure alike, Machiavelli argues again and again that the balance required to keep a state alive and well is achieved through a virtuous combination of internal and external factors. Of the many cryptic passages that Hobbes devotes to the contrast between the state of nature and the commonwealth, none captures this relationship better than his description of the difference between individuals and states, a difference due to the fact that by assuming a posture of war, sovereigns are able to “uphold [ . . . ] the industry of their subjects” and thus stave off “the misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men” (Lev. XIII §12). Of the several manifestations of the state of nature this one is the most powerful because it is the most likely. Frequent exposure to war gives the notion of a vacuum of authority skin and bones of a kind that other states of nature cannot hope for. Machiavelli knew this better than anyone when he declared that the best means of regaining a city was to expose it to an external threat of the kind that Rome faced when it was invaded by the Gauls, but in the end he could not recommend this as a prudent policy because of the danger that it posed. The challenge for the virtuous individual who would bring Machiavelli’s project to the “destined place” was thus to find a way to recreate the state of mind that such a threat brings about, but without the attendant danger and bloodshed. Hobbes’s solution, unexpectedly, was Aristotelian: to draw attention to the dangers that sovereigns keep at bay, and implant in the minds of his readers the contrast between things as they are and things as they

Hobbes’s Clockwork

197

could be if their worst nightmares came true.32 Using Machiavelli’s warnings as his points of departure, Hobbes was able to wrest necessity away from the hands of the enemy and transform dangerous threats into frightening psychological specters. His enduring and adaptable amalgam, the state of nature, makes him that other, “who with more virtue, more discourse and judgment” could fulfill Machiavelli’s intention (D I Pref. §1)— a prudent man who entered upon the path beaten by a great man (P VI: 22).

NOTES I would like to thank Tracie Sophia Evrigenis, Mark Somos, and Vickie Sullivan for their helpful comments. 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), hereafter cited as D, followed by book, chapter, and, paragraph number. See Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 62. 2. See Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chapter XIV:58–59, hereafter cited as P, followed by chapter and page numbers; Niccolò Machiavelli, The Art of War, trans. Ellis Farneworth, rev. and with an introduction by Neal Wood (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), xviii–xix, book I, 9. 3. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, 74. 4. There has been some debate regarding the status of this paragraph in the manuscript, but Mansfield offers good reasons for considering it definitive (Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the “Discourses on Livy” [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 25, note 1). 5. See Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1958] 1978), esp. 9–14; The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1952] 1984), xv–xvi. Cf. Mansfield, Introduction to The Prince, esp. viii-ix, Machiavelli’s Virtue; Sydney Anglo, Machiavelli—The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 6. Pocock considers Machiavelli’s interest in the founding of states a part of a distinctively republican tradition (J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975], 184–86), but Machiavelli’s language in Discourses I.1 and III.1 makes it clear that he finds the question a perennial one. Consider, for example, the title of the former: “What Have Been Universally the Beginnings of Any City Whatever, and What Was That of Rome” (D I.1). Moreover, for Machiavelli’s promise of innovation to be taken seriously, his own approach to beginnings must have something distinctive and novel, if it is to be considered a part of his “new modes and orders.” 7. D I.1§5. Machiavelli’s contempt for this traditional approach to understanding politics is evident in his application of his classification to Rome. Fully aware of

198

Ioannis D. Evrigenis

the fact that Rome is alleged to have had two progenitors, he argues that whichever story one chooses, that of Aeneas or that of Romulus, what matters is that Rome did not depend on anyone. 8. In this first quarter of book I, Machiavelli refers to Livy seven times. Two of these include quotations. He also quotes from Livy twice in chapter 15, though without naming him as the source. 9. There are neither mentions of, nor quotations from, Livy between chapters 16 and 33. From chapter 34 onward, Book I contains sixteen quotations from Livy as well as a further five mentions. It is noteworthy that, in comparison, the first quarter and second half of Book I contain the same number of references to Livy yet the latter contains four times as many quotations as the former (sixteen to four). 10. For additional complications with remembrance, see D II.5. 11. Machiavelli continues this practice beyond the Preface. In D II.2, esp. §§1–2, for example, he contrasts the love of freedom of the ancients with its absence in his own time. 12. See, e.g., D I.33–34, 49; III.1, 49. 13. See Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders, 302. 14. Machiavelli has strong views against dependence of all kinds, and he rarely misses an opportunity to make those known. See, for example, D I.1 §5, II.20, P VI, XIII. 15. If the reader who has reached III.2 still has any doubts about the significance of a return to the beginnings of cities, Machiavelli lays those to rest by the end of the Discourses, where he reminds us one last time that a republic, even one as successful as Rome, is in constant need of renewal (D III.49). 16. See D I.22–23. 17. See Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 167. 18. Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), hereafter cited as DC, followed by chapter and paragraph numbers. Cf. DC, Pref. §12. Hobbes never mentions Machiavelli by name in his writings, but refers at least twice to the Florentine (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan with Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994], XV §4, XXI §9, hereafter cited as Lev., followed by chapter and paragraph numbers). On the relationship between the two, see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1950] 1953), 177–83; Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 282; “Hobbes and Tacitus” in Hobbes and History, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell, 99–111 (London: Routledge, 2000), 110; and Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Chapters 3, 5. 19. Hobbes develops his views on the importance of history most prominently in his edition of Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War. See Ioannis D. Evrigenis, “Hobbes’s Thucydides,” Journal of Military Ethics 5 (4) (2006): 303–16. 20. Though a common enough metaphor, the presence of the contrast between darkness and light here, as well as in D II Pref. and III.1, is nevertheless striking. 21. The most noteworthy example is the question of its founder, one that Machiavelli manages to bypass in a clever way (D I.1§5).

Hobbes’s Clockwork

199

22. Hence, his realization, in D III.1, that even good orders will require the virtue of a good citizen to bring about the revival of the city (§§2–3). 23. The title to the chapter in which Hobbes discusses the state of nature corroborates this sequence: “On the State of Man without Civil Society” (DC I). 24. See, for example, D I.25-26, III.1. 25. DC, I.2; cf. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Hobbes, ed. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), I.75. 26. Thomas Hobbes, Thomæ Hobbesii Malmesburiensis vita (London: n.p., 1679), 6. 27. DC Pref. §§22–23. The second edition of De cive was published in 1647, and Leviathan followed in 1651. 28. See Evrigenis, Fear of Enemies and Collective Action, Chapter 5. 29. At the heading of chapter I of De cive, paragraph 2 is summarized as follows: “The beginning of civil society is from mutual fear.” 30. Hobbes is well aware of the possibilities involved in trains of thought, and discusses them at length in The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies with an introduction by M. M. Goldsmith (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1969), I.3–4; and Leviathan (II–III). 31. Hobbes explains, “Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government use to degenerate into, in a civil war” (Lev., XIII §11). 32. Aristotle, Politica, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1957] 1990), 1308a24–30.

10 Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault Four Variations on the Zero-Sum Theme James Read

So the desire to defend freedom made each one try to prevail so much that he oppressed the other. The order of these accidents is that when men seek not to fear, they begin to make others fear; and the injury that they dispel from themselves they put upon another, as if it were necessary to offend or to be offended. —Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy Because the power of one man resisteth and hindereth the effects of the power of another: power simply is no more, but the excess of the power of one above that of another. For equal powers opposed, destroy one another; and such their opposition is called contention. —Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law We have assumed a genuine polarity . . . in which positive and negative interests exactly cancel one another out. In a battle each side aims at victory; that is a case of true polarity, since the victory of one side excludes the victory of the other. —Carl von Clausewitz, On War Isn’t power a sort of generalized war that, at particular moments, assumes the forms of peace and the state? Peace would then be a form of war, and the state a means of waging it. —Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power”

My aim in this essay is to examine critically the very ancient and remarkably persistent idea that the power of one necessarily comes at the expense of the 201

202

James Read

power of another,1 and the closely related idea that all of social and political life is characterized by warfare of one kind or another—even during periods of relative order and stability. The essay examines the use of war as an archetype for the exercise of power more generally. There are other ways of understanding power, and other ways of arguing that one’s gain of power is another’s loss, than by modeling it on war.2 But once one models power on war, it necessarily follows that the power of one comes at the expense of the power of another. For the inherent logic of war (as Clausewitz observes in the passage above) is one of polarity: the interests of each side exactly cancel out, and success for one means failure for the other. (The tendency to characterize power as purely relative because of its link to warfare is especially pronounced in realist international relations theory.)3 The more broadly the concept of “war” is understood, the more pervasive becomes this suspicion that one human being or group can only gain at another’s expense. One of the strengths of the war model is that it recognizes the unsettled and fluctuating basis of power relations that can never be finally and fully stabilized by rules, laws, and constitutions. Another virtue of the war model is that it calls attention to some unsettling continuities between the phenomena we typically associate with war and with peace. All four of the theorists I examine in this essay take war as the model for their understanding of power, but not necessarily in the same way or for the same reasons. For Machiavelli there is no essential distinction between wartime and peacetime. All of politics, external as well as internal, is a kind of open or simmering warfare. There do exist periods of relative domestic peace and common efforts between all classes and groups—but only by turning the warfare outward, against an external enemy as the Roman Republic did. As soon as war against an external enemy ceases, the internal war resumes. Hobbes, unlike Machiavelli, believes there is an essential difference between the state of war and the state of peace. In war, human interests are inherently antagonistic and men must engage in pre-emptive strikes; under law and civil peace, in contrast, it is possible to realize common goods, prevent common evils, and trust other men. Yet Hobbes’s understanding of power retains its zero-sum character under peace and civil order for the people are understood to transfer all their power to the sovereign. Clausewitz does not attempt to describe all of politics or political power but limits himself to theorizing about war in the narrow sense. But his maxim that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means” (OW 87, 605–10) leaves unanswered the question whether or not politics and policy during “peacetime” is also characterized by polarity of interests, despite the employment of different means. Foucault reverses Clausewitz’s maxim, proposing instead that politics be regarded as the continuation of war by other means (PR, 123), and in the

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

203

process radically expands the range of phenomena to which the logic of war can be applied. Foucault thus in a sense restores the Machiavellian picture of universal warfare, but with an eye for scientific and bureaucratic weapons not yet available in Machiavelli’s time. This picture of universal warfare is especially characteristic of Discipline and Punish, where Foucault consistently assumes that whatever is in one side’s interest is opposed to the interests of the other side. It is possible (but not certain) that Foucault was moving away from the war model of power in his final years. My purpose in this essay is to lay out the rationale behind the assimilation of power to war, with its zero-sum logic, and to raise some doubts about this assimilation. At the same time I wish to recognize the element of insight in this modeling of power on war. It may be one-sided, but it is certainly not wholly false, and it has generated richly detailed and persuasive descriptions such as those of the theorists surveyed here. A convincing “refutation” of the warlike, zero-sum model of power would require not merely a critique of the kind attempted here, but an alternative non-zerosum description of power, equally detailed and persuasive.

II Machiavelli does not define power in the abstract way Hobbes does, and does not explicitly state that every gain of power for one entails a corresponding loss for another. Machiavelli’s understanding of what power is and how it works is implicit in his analysis of events, in the maxims of conduct he prescribes for princes and republicans, and in his description of human nature, which he believed was a constant: “Whoever considers present and ancient things easily knows that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same humors, and there always have been” (D I.39; 83). Implicit descriptions of power in which gain for one is loss for another, and implicit descriptions of political life as characterized by continual if sometimes secret warfare, may be found on nearly every page of Machiavelli. It is as though it were too obvious to have to put into words. Both the universal tendency to gain at another’s expense and the existence of continual warfare are closely linked to Machiavelli’s understanding of universal human nature: For whenever engaging in combat through necessity is taken from men they engage in combat through ambition, which is so powerful in human breasts that it never abandons them at whatever rank they rise to. . . . From this arises the variability of their fortune; for since some men desire to have more, and some fear to lose what has been acquired, they come to enmities and to war, from which arise the ruin of one province and the exaltation of another. (D I.37; 78)

204

James Read

Note here that Machiavelli does not say that this quarrelsome tendency leads to misery for everyone (as Hobbes says of the state of nature), which would give human beings an incentive to cooperate to prevent these common evils. Instead, Machiavelli speaks of “exaltation” for one and “ruin” for another in a way that implies a necessary interconnection between the two. It would be easy enough to make the case for the implicitly zero-sum character of power and of political life as constant warfare (internal as well as external) on the basis of The Prince. There Machiavelli states as a general rule, for example, that “whoever is the cause of someone’s becoming powerful is ruined; for that power has been caused by him either with industry or with force, and both the one and the other of these two are suspect to whoever has become powerful” (P III; 16). In other words, whoever causes another to become powerful is “ruined” because that power must necessarily come at another’s expense—in this case your own expense. The Romans, Machiavelli adds, understood this point and made sure they did not increase the power of anyone but themselves. In conquering neighboring provinces they “indulged the lesser powers without increasing their power, put down the powerful, and did not allow foreign powers to gain reputation there” (P III;11–12). According to a strict zero-sum accounting, this combination of acts would leave the Romans with more power than they enjoyed before, and all other parties with either less power, or no more power, than they previously possessed. But the case for the inherently zero-sum character of power in Machiavelli can be made more effectively on the basis of the Discourses than by relying on the Prince. This is the case for at least two reasons. First, although it is easy to find descriptions of power necessarily coming at another’s expense in The Prince, someone might hypothesize that this is not a universal phenomenon but instead a function of the peculiar character of princely rule (and especially of new princes). When one seeks to rule alone, as a prince does, instead of sharing rule as is the case in a republic, it might seem especially necessary to regard every other power as a threat, and to presuppose that one will be always at war with at least some segment of the population one rules. It is not immediately clear whether the same ruling assumptions should hold in a republic. The second reason is that the political life of stable republics might at first appear to constitute an exception to the zero-sum hypothesis, because political power is much more widely shared. Machiavelli does argue that the founder of a republic (or the reformer of a corrupt republic) must “have authority alone” (D I.9; 29). But this is presented as an exceptional case intended to prepare the way for the power-sharing typical of a healthy republic. Machiavelli observes that one of the strengths of republics is that they can channel toward the public good the ambitions of a much larger number of men than can a principality. A principality is always at risk if a weak

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

205

or bad king should succeed a good one. In contrast, the practice of elections provides republics not merely with one or two excellent leaders but with “infinite most virtuous princes who are successors to one another. This virtuous succession will always exist in every well-ordered republic” (D I.20; 54). If republics have an “infinite” number of virtuous leaders from which to draw over time (and even at a single point in time there would likely be several virtuous leaders available), then it would seem as though republics make it possible for the power and virtue of one man to add to the power and virtue of another, not subtract from it as under the zero-sum hypothesis. Republics, in short, would seem to make available more power for more men than principalities do. Machiavelli does concede such a possibility, but only under conditions that restore the zero-sum hypothesis in another form. In a republic it is indeed possible for many men to enjoy power simultaneously—but only at the expense of the power of those outside the community. The healthy republic is an expansive republic, a point made clear in the same chapter from Discourses I.20 noted above. The “infinite” number of virtuous leaders enjoyed by a republic give it a power to “acquire the world” greater than any principality. Rome, for instance, reached its “ultimate greatness” not under its kings but under the Republic (D, 54). There is no indication that those conquered by a healthy republic gain any power in the process. This same kind of internal positive-sum, external zero-sum logic characteristic of a healthy republic is described most forcefully in Machiavelli’s analysis of the battles between the people and the Senate of Rome (D, I. 46). Machiavelli dissents from those who claim that the class conflicts of the Roman Republic were a source of weakness, arguing instead that “the disunion of the Plebs and the Roman Senate made that republic free and powerful.” In non-expansive republics like Venice or Sparta, Machiavelli concedes, such class conflicts would have led to ruin. But an expansive republic such as Rome makes it possible to redirect the force of domestic political conflict into foreign conquest. The conflicts between senate and plebs have a terrifying look to them but in fact, Machiavelli claims, these conflicts were outweighed by both sides’ shared interest in foreign conquest. The senate could not enjoy any of the fruits of conquest unless it was willing to share at least some of them with the people, which could refuse to enroll in the wars unless their demands were satisfied. For Machiavelli this is a sign of political health, not disease: “Every city ought to have its modes with which the people can vent its ambition, and especially those cities that wish to avail themselves of the people in important things (D I.4; 17). By empowering its plebians, Rome both strengthened itself, and created “infinite opportunities for tumult.” If Rome had sought instead “to remove the causes of tumults” by depriving its plebians of any stake in the wars, it would have “removed too the causes of expansion” (D I. 6; 21).

206

James Read

In short, Rome purchased internal political health (even if it looked like disorder) through external conquest. Conversely, if a republic’s power is not turned outward against common enemies, then it turns inward upon itself and generates the kind of conflicts that really do destroy a republic. Should heaven be so kind to a republic that it “did not need to make war,” Machiavelli remarks ironically, then the resulting idleness will make the republic “either effeminate or divided” and one or both of these things will bring about its ruin (D I.6; 23). Thus for Machiavelli there seem to be two possibilities with regard to the workings of power in a republic. Either citizens of a republic can pool their respective powers (either as individuals or as classes) and collectively gain at the expense of outsiders or they can renounce expansion and instead turn their attention to tearing fellow citizens to shreds. One is a symptom of health, the other of disease, but both assume that gains in power for one necessarily mean losses for another. Machiavelli occasionally hints at a kind of universal principle whereby power or virtue is conserved with increases at one point entailing corresponding decreases somewhere else. He observes that human affairs are always in a state of flux whereby “either they ascend or they descend.” The notion of flux by itself does not necessarily entail that one always gain at another’s expense; at least in principle, there could be fluctuations whereby things are moving upwards or downwards for humanity as a whole. But Machiavelli himself draws the conclusion that these fluctuations occur in such a way that overall gains and losses cancel out. “I judge the world always to have been in the same mode and there to have been as much good as wicked in it. But the wicked and the good vary from province to province, as is seen by one who has knowledge of those ancient kingdoms, which varied from one to another because of the variation of customs, though the world remained the same.” When virtue disappeared from Assyria, it turned up in Medea and Persia, and when it disappeared from those places it made its way to Italy and Rome (D II, Preface; 123–24). From such a general principle it would follow that the virtue and power of Rome at the height of its greatness were a function of weakness and corruption somewhere else, and the weakness and corruption of Italy in Machiavelli’s own time a function of the strength of some other contemporary power or powers. A general principle of this kind may indeed recommend republics (where they are attainable) over other forms of government because of the greater total power that can be accumulated in a republic. But a healthy republic would be one set upon conquest and oppression of other peoples. Universal empowerment is not in Machiavelli’s vocabulary.

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

207

III Power is as explicitly central to Hobbes’s political theory as it is implicitly central to Machiavelli. In Leviathan Hobbes provides a comprehensive general definition of power as a man’s “present means to obtain some future apparent good” (L chapter 10; 150), and in Elements of Law directly asserts that “because the power of one man resisteth and hindereth the effects of the power of another: power simply is no more, but the excess of the power of one above that of another” (EL chapter 8; 26). The latter passage is a textbook version of the zero-sum hypothesis, and is fully consistent with Machiavelli’s description of political life. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes grounds his understanding of power (and of political life generally) in a description of universal human nature. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes takes the phenomenon of war as his theoretical starting point, and there are close connections between Hobbes’s zero-sum description of power and the strategic logic characteristic of war. And yet there are fundamental differences between Machiavelli and Hobbes that are directly relevant to the question of whether, and why, more power for one should necessarily entail less power for another. Hobbes truly believes in the possibility of putting an end to the state of war (at least within a political community) in a way that Machiavelli does not. Hobbes’s general definition of power, as “present means to obtain some future apparent good,” definitely does not logically require that the power of one human being always come at the expense of the power of another. This would seem instead to depend on what specific good one seeks to obtain, how one goes about acquiring it, and how one interacts with others. Hobbes’s description of human nature gives prominence to a far wider range of human motives—not all of them warlike—than Machiavelli’s description does. In chapter 13 of Leviathan, Hobbes describes three principal causes of quarrel: competition (which includes the pursuit of material goods); diffidence (meaning fear for one’s own security); and glory (L, 185). The third of these motives, glory, is the one most pervasive in Machiavelli’s description of human nature and accounts for the inability of Machiavellian men to live at peace. The glory of one man necessarily presupposes lack of glory for another, a fact that Hobbes recognizes in his own definition of glory in Elements of Law as “that passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power, above the power of him that contendeth with us” (EL, 28). If Hobbes had stopped here in his description of human motivations and of the causes of human conflict, there would be no essential difference between his description of conflict and that of Machiavelli.

208

James Read

But though Hobbes clearly considers the desire for glory to be an important motive, he denies that it is the principal human motive. In chapter 13 of Leviathan, in the course of describing why men living without law engage in constant war with one another, Hobbes claims that the aim that motivates such men “is principally their owne conservation.” He adds that “delectation,” under which category glory would presumably fall, is “sometimes” a motive. Some men do indeed take “pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security requires.” Meanwhile other men, presumably the majority, who “would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds,” will not be able to survive unless they likewise seek “by invasion [to] increase their power” (L, 184). The tragedy of Hobbes’s state of nature is precisely that those human beings who would prefer to live at peace are forced to act in ways indistinguishable from the most glory-driven of conquerors: “From this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himselfe, so reasonable, as Anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed” (L, 184). Under such conditions, a zero-sum description of power, modeled on the logic of war, would be perfectly appropriate. But if this is the reason why one’s gain of power is another’s loss in the state of nature, then the establishment of a civil state, which makes trust and cooperation possible, should also change Hobbes’s description of power. Under conditions of peace and law, it ought to be no longer the case, or at least not inevitably the case, that the power of one man be reducible to the excess of his power over another. Where human beings enjoy physical security and cooperate to enjoy the fruits of trade, commerce, and industry—all of which Hobbes argues are possible where a sovereign secures civil peace—then it would seem that the power of one man should add to the power of another, at least in some important respects, not inevitably subtract from it. Yet Hobbes himself never explicitly modifies his zero-sum description of power to take into account the difference between power-seeking in the state of nature and power-seeking in civil society. Such a problem would not arise for Machiavelli because there is no such essential transition from the logic of war to the logic of peace in Machiavelli’s theory; the state of war never ceases. Hobbes seems to recognize the gulf between Machiavelli’s thinking and his own on this point. In chapter 15 of Leviathan Hobbes lays out and answers the arguments of a “Fool” who seems closely modeled on Machiavelli’s advice in The Prince. This “Fool” has said that there is “no such thing as Justice” and that a man’s own selfpreservation requires that he break covenants “when it conduced to ones benefit.” In answering the argument, Hobbes concedes that it is reasonable

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

209

to break covenants in the state of nature where one cannot trust that the other party will perform them. Yet where there is “a Civill Power erected over the parties promising” and thus a power to force the other party to fulfill the covenant, it is entirely reasonable to fulfill covenants and unreasonable to break them (L, 203–4). Hobbes here argues that the conditions of civil society are so essentially different from the conditions of warfare that a reasonable course of action in one case is precisely the opposite of a reasonable course of action in the other. If the change is so great with respect to the rationality of honoring covenants, one must ask whether the workings of power ought to change significantly as well. Conflict among human beings does not cease under civil society, of course, nor would glory and pre-eminence disappear as motives. Even where mutually beneficial economic cooperation exists, there would continue to be cases where “two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy,” and men concerned about their reputation would continue to fall out over “trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, or any other signe of undervalue . . .” (L, 184–85). But under civil order enforced by a sovereign, such conflicts would not spiral out of control, drive out all other motives and interests, and draw innocent parties into the battle, as they do in the state of nature. Even if one’s power comes at another’s expense in cases where the interests of one are clearly opposed to the interests of another, this does not characterize the full range of interests or the full range of social and political life. Nor is there any indication in Hobbes that internal peace is possible only at the expense of external conquest, as Machiavelli argues. Hobbes does assume that the state of nature will continue to exist among nations and that “Kings, and Persons of Sovereigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators.” But this occurs because international relations is a lawless realm. Hobbes does not claim, as Machiavelli does, that an internally well-ordered commonwealth will necessarily be more driven to conquer its neighbors than the average independent state. If anything, Hobbes’s description of states having “their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes” is mildly positive and, despite the warlike stance of one state toward all others, suggests the possibility of a collective gain of internal security for all the states involved “because they uphold thereby, the Industry of their Subjects” and prevent the much greater misery that results from civil war (L, 187–88). (Hobbes considered pathological the kind of turbulently expansive republics that Machiavelli admired; see L, 267–68.) Thus Hobbes’s own description of the difference between the state of nature and civil society would seem to call for an understanding of power which is not necessarily zero-sum. And yet Hobbes retains the zero-sum language in the new setting. The power of the sovereign, for instance, is a

210

James Read

function of the lack of power of the subjects he rules: “The Power and Honour of Subjects vanisheth in the presence of the Power Sovereign” (L, 237). In the covenant men make with one another to establish a sovereign power, each agrees “to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will”; each gives up “my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner” (L, 227). Taken literally, this complete “transfer” of power and right would seem to reintroduce the zero-sum assumption in an even more radical form (the sovereign gaining all power and the subjects losing all power). It would also, again taken literally, look like the most complete of conquests on one side and the most abject form of servitude on the other. And yet at the same time Hobbes insists that “the riches, power and honour of a Monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and reputation of his Subjects” (L, 241–42) and thus the sovereign has no reason deliberately to weaken or harm his subjects. In chapter 10 of Leviathan, immediately after giving a general definition of power, Hobbes explicitly lists “Riches,” “strength,” and “reputation” as forms of power. So now it seems that the power of the sovereign adds to and reinforces the power of subjects, the exact opposite of the zero-sum assumption. What is going on here? In fact the apparently radical zero-sum power relation between sovereign and subjects suggested by the “transfer” language of the covenant is a kind of optical illusion. The all-powerful sovereign is all-powerful only by definition. It is agreed that he is omnipotent (even if he is not) because it is in the common interest of all to put an end to the “war of all against all,” and according to Hobbes the only way to do so is to grant absolute (if only fictionally absolute) power to someone. The “absolute” power exercised by the sovereign over subjects is a highly artificial type of power that operates very differently than the ordinary kinds of power exercised in the state of nature and by ordinary subjects in civil society. Since the power itself is an invented one, it can be endowed with whatever characteristics are necessary or useful to its operation, including a kind of fictional omnipotence. For this reason, one really cannot compare it with the kind of power contests that originally led Hobbes to describe the power of one man coming at the expense of the power of another. The power exercised by the sovereign over the subjects originates from the subjects themselves, from their agreement that there should be an absolute power of this kind. Seen from one angle, the subjects seem absolutely powerless and passive. But the machine works only because they give it their active support. One could say that they actively agree to regard themselves as passive; the left hand denies what the right hand is doing. This is very different from anything in Machiavelli (where the power of the prince or of the

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

211

leaders of republics remains far more concrete and personal, and the active support of the populace more episodic and tenuous). Thus one could say that for Hobbes, in the state of nature the power of one human being necessarily comes at the expense of the power of another, and this is precisely what one cannot endure, while under civil society, the power of one human being does not necessarily come at another’s expense, but this is precisely what one cannot admit.

IV Clausewitz did not pretend to theorize about anything except war. He did not offer any general theory of political power, or speak comprehensively about international politics or the specific causes of war. But he understood that war was interconnected with the rest of political life: “War is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. . . . In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs;” the “grammar” of war “may be its own, but not its logic” (OW, 605). There can be no such thing as a “purely military” strategy unaffected by politics, because the aim of a war is determined politically and all military strategy must have reference to that aim. “The political object is the goal,” according to Clausewitz, “war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose” (OW, 87). It is the character of this continuity between war and the rest of political life that concerns us here, and above all the question of whether what Clausewitz calls the “principle of polarity” should be included in this continuity. By the principle of polarity Clausewitz means that in war, by definition, “the positive and negative interests exactly cancel one another out” (OW, 83). Whatever is in the interest of one side, the opposite must be in the interest of the other side. Thus war follows an inherently zero-sum logic. If war is a continuation of politics by other means, and if it is axiomatic that war follows a zero-sum logic, then should the political intercourse that precedes and succeeds a war also necessarily be understood in zero-sum terms? If so, then it would follow that all power, or at least all political power, should be modeled on war. If not, then it would seem crucially important to understand exactly when and why in the political processes surrounding war the zero-sum assumption (the “principle of polarity”) gives way to some other principle of interaction between the two sides. Though Clausewitz’s continuity thesis invites this question, Clausewitz himself does not answer it. From the perspective of the present inquiry, however, it is too important a question to leave unaddressed. War is at least a distant possibility in all politics, international or domestic. Clausewitz himself is not preoccupied with civil war as Hobbes was, but

212

James Read

there is no reason why this “principle of polarity” should not characterize civil war as well. The question that Clausewitz stirs up but does not answer is how the near or distant shadow of war shapes politics and political power (and of course it might shape politics in more than one way). To ask whether Clausewitz’s “principle of polarity” should apply exclusively to war, or to both sides of the war-politics continuity, is an attempt to shed light on this larger question. Clausewitz’s principle of polarity applies to every single tactical decision made during a war. If it is in the interest of A to avoid battle on a given day, it must be in the interest of B to engage A in battle on that same day. “If action would bring an advantage to one side, the other’s interest must be to wait” (OW, 82). For this reason periods during war when action is suspended (but no peace treaty yet signed) require a fairly complicated explanation. They cannot result from any mutual interest in avoiding battle, for this would violate the principle of polarity. Clausewitz instead explains inactive periods on the basis of imperfect information. If one had perfect information, one would know for certain whether it was in one’s interest to do battle on a given day, and know for certain that it was in the opponent’s interest to do the opposite. But because neither side can know for certain whether action on a given day will be to their advantage, both antagonists can without inconsistency choose on a given day to avoid battle. Another cause of suspension, not unrelated to the first, is “the fear and indecision native to the human mind,” which can easily “reduce war to something tame and half-hearted” (OW, 217–18). The same principle of polarity that guides each specific engagement in war, also defines the meaning of victory and defeat in the war as a whole. Victory in war means “to compel our enemy to do our will. . . . To secure that object we must render the enemy powerless; and that, in theory, is the true aim of warfare” (OW, 75). The power of one side is a direct function of the powerlessness of the other; that is what victory means. It is this larger principle of polarity, the polarity of victory and defeat, that produces the polarity in every particular engagement—why if it is in one side’s interest to fight, it is in the other’s interest to wait, and so on. Clausewitz does acknowledge the existence of limited wars where victory does not mean the complete overthrow of the enemy. But in his view the principle of polarity applies just as much to limited wars as to unlimited ones. The aim of a limited war, where “we cannot hope to defeat the enemy totally,” is instead “to reduce his fighting strength and increase our own” (OW, 611). Though the stakes are not as high in a limited as in an unlimited war, it remains the case that whatever is in the interest of one side must be contrary to the interest of the other, and the strength of one side is a function of the weakness of the other. Clausewitz never indicates that two hostile states might have a common interest in keeping a war limited. The

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

213

true and perfect logic of war should exclude limited war, “since in essence war and peace admit of no gradations.” Nevertheless, “the frailties and shortcomings of the human race” produce limited wars in which “the active element gradually becomes passive” and “the art of war . . . shrivel[s] into prudence” (OW, 603–4). (Note here the similarity between Clausewitz’s discussion of the human passivity that leads to limited wars and the “fear and indecision” that lead to suspension of action on a given day.) As a realist, Clausewitz must admit the existence of limited wars and describe them as best he can, but the pure principles of war are best displayed in unlimited wars (OW, 579–81). Clausewitz also continues to apply the principle of polarity to the process by which wars are brought to an end. An unlimited war comes to an end when one side renders the other powerless to resist; peace is made on terms set by the victor. This is polarity in its pure form. In a limited war neither antagonist is in a position to destroy the other’s capacity to resist. The peace process in a limited war commences when one of the antagonists decides that the cost of attaining its politically determined object exceeds the value of that object: We see then that if one side cannot completely disarm the other, the desire for peace on either side will rise and fall with the probability of further successes and the amount of effort these would require. If such incentives were of equal strength on both sides, the two would resolve their political disputes by meeting half way. If the incentive grows on one side, it should diminish on the other. Peace will result so long as their sum total is sufficient—though the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain. (OW, 92)

Notice here that Clausewitz applies the very same principle of polarity to the process of ending a war as he does to war itself. “If the incentive [for peace] grows on one side, it should diminish on the other,” he says, and “the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.” This is directly parallel to his wartime rule that if action on a given day would bring advantage to one side, it must be in the interest of the other side to wait. Recall the central problem posed above: if war is a continuation of politics by other means, and if war is characterized by the logic of polarity, does this logic of polarity continue into the political process and vice versa? At least in the passage just quoted, Clausewitz’s answer to this question would seem to be yes. How far beyond the peacemaking negotiations he would extend the principle of polarity is an open question. One might conceivably criticize Clausewitz at this point for ignoring the mixed-motive situations that characterize almost all actual political conflicts, international or domestic. Pure and unlimited conflict to the death

214

James Read

between entire populations is an extreme case (though unfortunately not entirely hypothetical). One might argue that, more commonly, wars involve losses for both sides, even if the victor loses relatively less than the vanquished. (World War I comes to mind here, and there would have been parallel cases in the historical record available to Clausewitz.) For if, as Clausewitz himself insists, war is pointless except insofar as it advances a political object—some interest deemed important enough to purchase with bloodshed—then it is entirely conceivable that the actual outcome of a war could leave both sides worse off with respect to those key interests. Clausewitz’s principle of polarity (whereby loss for one side is by definition gain for the other) seems completely blind to such a possibility. (The classic treatment of mixed-motive strategic situations is given by Schelling, which describes a strategic logic different than Clausewitz’s principle of polarity.4) I believe this criticism is a fair one, and it does highlight one of the limitations of Clausewitz’s analysis of war in its relation to politics. On the other hand, some aspects of war and international conflict are better explained by Clausewitz’s single-minded preoccupation with the principle of polarity than by any analysis of mixed-motive conflicts. Clausewitz’s principle of polarity helps us understand the radical reorientation of perspective that occurs once we begin thinking of a particular conflict as a war, and of ourselves as participants in war. Clausewitz’s claim that “in essence war and peace admit of no gradations” seems at first dogmatic and at variance with reality. But it may express a psychological truth about war. For one thing, Clausewitz’s principle of polarity explains better than any mixed-motive model how war can proceed to extremes never contemplated by either antagonist at the beginning. Once a war begins, it has an inherently expansive dynamic that can easily lead it to dominate, if not devour, everything else. This expansive tendency is central to Clausewitz’s own analysis. There is an inherent tendency in war, he says, toward “the maximum use of force.” If one side increases the level of violence then “that side will force the other to follow suit; each will drive its opponent toward extremes. . . . A reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes” (OW, 75–77). Clausewitz is quick to add that in practice war usually does not proceed to this theoretical limit in which literally all of a nation’s will and resources are invested in a war. But it can proceed to that limit, as demonstrated by the Napoleonic Wars in Clausewitz’s narrative (OW, 86, 583) and also by some wars of the twentieth century. And even when it does not proceed to the extreme, there is no way of knowing ahead of time how far it will go once it commences. Clausewitz’s principle of polarity seems blind to the mutual losses that occur when a war expands far beyond what anyone imagined or desired. But at the same time it helps us understand why the participants in such wars display this same blindness. Under the sway of the logic of war, common interests become irrelevant to the matter at hand and the principle of polarity takes over.

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

215

Indeed, the mere existence of some shared interests among warring states does not overthrow Clausewitz’s principle of polarity because Clausewitz never claimed that two states at war with one another have inherently irreconcilable interests. Once peace has been made on whatever terms the outcome of war allows, interests can be adjusted. But so long as the war continues, it is the principle of polarity that rules. One can approach this problem in another way, by asking how, in the midst of war, the latent common interests between two states (or the population of those states) might be realized. Wars (at least the kind Clausewitz analyzes) are fought by one government against another government, who must assume that whatever hurts the other government helps their own and vice versa. Idealists may dream that the peoples of warring states will recognize their shared interests with the people of the rival state, defy their governments, and directly make peace with one another, but this rarely if ever happens. What is more likely to happen is one of two things. The people of one state, acting unilaterally, may demand that their government make peace. This turns up in Clausewitz’s world as the kind of inherent human weakness that prevents war from proceeding to the ultimate extreme and that delivers victory to the side that did not display this weakness. Alternatively, the government of one of the warring states may appeal directly to the people of the enemy state, “over the heads” of their government, urging them to reform or overthrow the bad government that stands in the way of realizing the two peoples’ genuinely shared interests. Clausewitz was not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. The armies sent into the field by revolutionary France and later with far greater effectiveness by Bonaparte presented themselves as emissaries of liberation. Clausewitz did not believe that the political object of a war of liberation challenged in any sense the zero-sum logic of war, the “principle of polarity.” On the contrary, it was the purest embodiment of that principle and its tendency to push war to its greatest extreme. “Suddenly war again became the business of the people—a people of thirty millions. . . . Nothing now impeded the vigor with which war could be waged. . . . War . . . took on an entirely different character, or rather closely approached its true character, its absolute perfection” (OW, 592). For one government to fight a war against another government by appealing to the people of the rival state against their government does not refute Clausewitz’s principle of polarity; on the contrary, it tends to reinforce it. The strength of Clausewitz’s principle of polarity is that it perfectly describes how one begins to reason, feel, act, and react once one puts on the peculiar pair of spectacles that we call war. But if it is true that the idea of war has the inherently expansive, all-or-nothing logic Clausewitz assigns to it, and if, as he also points out, war is the continuation of politics by other means, then what we might most want to know is how and why the initial, fateful decision is made to view a certain conflict as a war. (This is obviously

216

James Read

not the same as a “declaration of war” under the U.S. Constitution or under international law.) The mental framework of war may be adopted long before any actual shots are fired. In some cases the decision to see something as war may be straightforward. But in other cases the decision is clearly a political one. For example, decades before the U.S. Civil War, the slaveholding states made a political decision to regard abolitionist agitation not merely as criticism of an institution but as an act of war, proceeding not merely from private organizations but from the northern states that tolerated those organizations.5 The slaveholding states could have defined the problem differently, and if they had defined it differently they would have acted differently over the next two decades. More recently, the United States made a political decision to regard the al Queda attacks as a war—not only as a war by al Queda against the United States (which is clearly how the attackers themselves saw it) but as a war with all forms of terrorism and against all states deemed sponsors of terrorism. Whatever one’s judgment about this particular response, it was a political choice, not a foregone conclusion, to see this as a war and as a war of a particular type (as opposed, for instance, to defining it as action against an international criminal organization). Clausewitz argues that war is a continuation of politics by other means and that the aim of a war is determined politically. He adds that war and peace are essentially different, not matters of degree. He never implies (as Machiavelli and Foucault do) that the principles of war always apply. But he actually has little to say about the decision by one or both sides to treat a particular conflict as a war. Given how completely the world changes its shape once one adopts the perspective of war and its peculiar logic of polarity, this is a significant omission.

V Power is ubiquitous in the world described by Michel Foucault. Power relations are not limited to relations between state and citizens but “go right down into the depths of society” (DP, 270); “Power relations are rooted in the whole network of the social” and are “coextensive with every social relationship” (PR, 435). In practice this means that power is exercised not only by governments and armies but by teachers, psychologists, social workers, workplace engineers—in general, anyone who possesses some kind of disciplinary expertise. If power and domination were the monopoly of the state or of some identifiable ruling class, one might hope to eliminate them. But because power and domination are in fact rooted in every social relation, any hope of eradicating all forms of power and domination is an illusion (PR, 343).

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

217

That power relations are not limited to the political sphere narrowly understood is not by itself an especially radical idea. Hobbes’s general definition of power (discussed earlier) is quite extensive, for example. What distinguishes Foucault is that power is ubiquitous not only quantitatively (that is, present in all social relations), but also qualitatively, in the sense that the pursuit of knowledge (or truth) and the exercise of power are inseparable. Truth and knowledge do not “exist only where power relations are suspended.” On the contrary, “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” Foucault’s purpose in Discipline and Punish is to examine “the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge” (DP, 27–28). A social-scientific “discipline” (psychology, medicine, criminology) is at the same time the means of “disciplining” human subjects. To be studied, to become an object of knowledge, is to be subjected to the exercise of power. But the omnipresence of power, even in this second and more radical sense, though unsettling, does not of itself require that more power for one entail less power for someone else—the theme of the present inquiry. Whether or not power is omnipresent is a logically different question from whether or not power should be understood in zero-sum terms. However, once one accepts the premise that power is ubiquitous (not merely concentrated in “the political sphere”), then the stakes become much higher with respect to how one answers the zero-sum question. If power and domination were concentrated in only one sphere of social life—the political as opposed to the “private” sphere—or if there existed some realm of pure truth to which one could escape from time to time, it might matter less whether one’s gain of power were always another’s loss within the sphere where power is concentrated. If power is omnipresent, and if it is always such that gain for one is loss for another, then there is no escape, either in private life or in the pursuit of truth, from a radicalized version of Hobbes’s war of all against all. Foucault does seem to describe exactly this kind of ubiquitous zero-sum struggle when he draws upon the model of war to describe the workings of power. The study of disciplinary power “should take as its model a perpetual battle” (DP, 26) for “the history that bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language—relations of power, not relations of meaning” (PR, 116). “Shouldn’t one then conceive of all problems of power in terms of relations of war?” (PR, 124) He closes Discipline and Punish by claiming that what “ultimately presides” over all the mechanisms of control analyzed in the book—mechanisms present not only in prisons but also in factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals—“is not the unitary functioning of an apparatus or an institution, but the necessity of combat

218

James Read

and the rules of strategy. . . . In this central and centralized humanity, the effect and instrument of multiple power relations, bodies and forces subjected by multiple mechanisms of ‘incarceration,’ objects for discourses that are in themselves elements for this strategy, we must hear the distant roar of battle” (DP, 308). In making use of the model of war to describe power in general, Foucault seems to mean at least three things. First, he means that power relations are characterized by continual flux and shifting balances, not embodied in any enduring, stable hierarchy. It may be an unequal contest, but the weaker force has not surrendered: disciplinary subjection is never complete. Second, he means that power relations are active on both sides. A regime of power may aim at complete and final domination, just as in war one side may aim to “compel our enemy to do our will” (as Clausewitz puts it), but as long as the war continues both sides retain some freedom of action, each shapes the action of the other, and neither fully controls the other. The possibility of a reversal is always present, and one can sometimes turn the enemy’s own weapons against him. Finally—and this is the crucial issue for purposes of the present inquiry—Foucault probably means that power relations are characterized by what Clausewitz called the principle of polarity, meaning that in war whatever is in the interest of one side is the reverse of the interest of the other side. I say “probably” because Foucault never states this as a universal principle. But his description of actual power relations, at least in Discipline and Punish, does indeed display something like Clausewitz’s principle of polarity (as we will see below). By “war” and “battle” Foucault does not mean that all power relations are literally based on violence. That would narrow the range of what counts as power, not broaden it to every social relation. In a later essay Foucault specifically distinguishes between power and violence (without necessarily renouncing the wider metaphor of war as a model of power), saying, “A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it breaks, it destroys, or it closes off all possibilities.” Power on the other hand “operates on the field of possibilities in which the behavior of active subjects is able to inscribe itself. . . . Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are ‘free.’” (PR, 340–42). These two passages (which come from the essay “The Subject and Power,” published in 1982) might seem incompatible with the war model of power emphasized in Discipline and Punish. At one point in the essay he describes governmental power as “a singular mode of action” that is “neither warlike nor juridical” (PR, 341). This suggests that Foucault may have later changed his mind about modeling power on war. But many other elements of “The Subject and Power” parallel the kind of war-model analysis of Discipline and Punish. The fact that power is “exercised only over free subjects” does not indicate a break with the war model, because war also is fought against an en-

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

219

emy who is still on the move. And by “over free subjects” Foucault does not mean an uncoerced, truly equal contract (he specifically argues that “power is not a matter of consent”) but merely that the one subjected to power retains some capacity for independent action (PR, 340). Though Foucault may have later modified his specific definition of power, there is no indication that he ceased to hear the “roar of battle” in the operation of power relations. Discipline and Punish best exemplifies how Foucault employed the model of war to describe the exercise of power. The book opens with a pair of descriptions, first a spectacular public torture in 1757 of a man who killed a king, and second of a humane-sounding penitentiary routine from 1837. What interests Foucault in this shift from older to more modern forms of punishment is not the supposedly greater humanity or rationality of the latter but the “change of objective” involved (DP, 16). The spectacular public torture of criminals expressed “the sovereign’s right to make war on his enemies” (DP, 48). A crime was a direct challenge to the sovereign’s power and thus “an act of hostility, the first sign of rebellion, which is not in principle different from civil war” (DP, 57). By exacting spectacular public revenge, the king grounds his own “surplus power” as the counterpart to the “‘lack of power’ with which those subjected to punishment are marked” (DP, 29). (Note here something like Clausewitz’s “principle of polarity” in the war between kings and lawbreakers.) The king also reminds all other subjects of the fate that awaits them if they rebel against their sovereign. Thus this form of punishment is a fairly transparent strategy in the continual war between rulers and ruled. But it is also a risky strategy because the king’s own weapons can be turned against him. These ritual executions too often became a public “carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and criminals transformed into heroes” (DP, 61). For if the king’s revenge is in fact a strategy in a civil war, he cannot be certain whether the spectators will side with him or with a proud and unrepentant lawbreaker, who is himself a kind of political rebel. The modern forms of punishment (and education) which are the main focus of Discipline and Punish can be understood as gentler and more effective strategies of social control. Compared to spectacular public executions, these new tactics of control “insert the power to punish more deeply into the social body” (DP, 82), making punishment more effective, less costly, less visible, and less likely to evoke rebellion. Instead of attacking the criminal’s body through spectacular torture, the new methods of punishment are intended to discover and correct the “soul” of the lawbreaker. This requires that the nature of crime and criminals be carefully studied, and prisons are the perfect laboratories: “The prison functions in this as an apparatus of knowledge” (DP, 126). In the central chapters of Discipline and Punish the focus shifts temporarily from the correction of lawbreakers to the training and discipline of

220

James Read

soldiers, factory workers, and schoolchildren. Foucault’s purpose is to describe the types of disciplinary power employed to produce a “normal” and “productive” soldier, worker, or child. At times his description of the skills and productive powers unleashed by modern disciplinary techniques sounds positive: “We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes,’ it ‘represses.’ . . . In fact, power produces. . . . The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production” (DP, 194). In an interview conducted immediately after he finished Discipline and Punish, Foucault criticizes the concept of repression (in both its psychological and political sense) because it overlooks “precisely the productive aspect of power. . . . What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network that runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression” (PR, 120). One might easily mistake Foucault’s meaning here. When he says that power is not negative and repressive but positive and “productive,” he might be taken to mean that disciplinary power “empowers” and liberates individuals. The disciplinary power exercised by A over B would here seem to increase, not diminish, B’s power. Interpreted this way, Foucault would seem to be specifically rejecting any zero-sum, power-as-warfare thesis. This interpretation is all the more seductive because it is entirely reasonable to conclude that discipline, or at least certain forms of it, do indeed tend over time to foster the power and autonomy of the individual over whom the discipline is exercised. Much of what teachers, parents, and athletic coaches do is based upon exactly this kind of faith. But that is not Foucault’s meaning, at least not in the story told in Discipline and Punish. Instead disciplinary power is presented as a new and more insidious strategy in the old war of social and political control. Its purpose is to render the human body “more obedient as it becomes more useful”: Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an “aptitude,” a “capacity,” which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection . . . Disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the constricting link between an increased aptitude and an increased domination. (DP, 138)

Foucault here describes the “increased aptitude” and the “increased domination” as though the one were the necessary counterpart of the other. Effective management of a chattel slave might very well develop “aptitudes”

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

221

and “capacities” in a slave without doing anything to liberate that slave. You have certain powers, and they are productive, but they are not necessarily your powers or directed toward your purposes. According to a kind of zerosum logic, the person or institution to whom one is subjected becomes more powerful—at your expense, by exploiting your own powers—as you become more effectively dominated. There is nothing positive or “empowering” about this picture. Instead it is a new kind of prison, and this leads Foucault back to the main theme of the book. He uses the metaphor of the Panopticon—the prison architecture whereby every prisoner can be observed at all times, but can never see the observer or even know if he is being observed—to argue for an essential similarity between the methods of knowledge, discipline, and control employed in prisons and the methods employed in every other sphere of social life. “Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labor, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (DP, 228) If the disciplinary techniques originally developed to classify, control, and correct lawbreakers have proliferated in the way Foucault asserts and are now routinely used on “normal” individuals (indeed, used to produce “normal” individuals) in every sphere of social life, they have at the same time conspicuously failed to accomplish their original purpose. Foucault lays out the well-known story of the failure of modern “correctional” institutions to accomplish their purpose. Prisons do not correct, they do not rehabilitate, they do not reduce the crime rate; instead, they make men worse than they were before, they create and maintain a permanent criminal subculture. “If the law is supposed to define offenses,” Foucault says, “if the function of the penal apparatus is to reduce them and if the prison is the instrument of this repression, then failure has to be admitted” (DP, 271). He adds that these failures have been recognized from the very beginning of the penitentiary system in the early nineteenth century. It would seem then that our penitentiary system does little good either to society at large or to the individuals it is intended to correct, and that everyone—including persons convicted of crimes—has an interest in creating a better system. But Foucault cannot stop at so routine a conclusion. The prison system must be understood above all as a strategy in a war, and it would violate what Clausewitz calls the “principle of polarity” to imagine the existence of shared interests among antagonists in a war. So Foucault recommends instead that “one should reverse the problem and ask oneself what is served by the failure of the prison.” What purpose might it serve, and whose purposes does it serve, to create an entire class of individuals permanently

222

James Read

“branded” as delinquents, morally and politically isolated from the rest of society, subjected to constant surveillance? Foucault argues that “the prison, apparently ‘failing,’ does not miss its target; on the contrary, it reaches it.” Its purpose is to create “one particular form of illegality in the midst of others,” a politically and economically less dangerous form of illegality than the kind of revolutionary violence that turns lawbreakers into popular heroes (DP, 272–73, 276–77). One should recall here the danger of public executions turning into occasions for political rebellion against the sovereign’s power. A class of criminals, branded and isolated from the rest of society, may be a nuisance but does not seriously threaten established powers. The prison thus is not a failure at all but a war strategy of proven effectiveness. In his role as a public intellectual speaking on contemporary prison issues Foucault consistently followed the war-model logic. He refused to give advice to social workers and prison reformers who felt “paralyzed” by his critique in Discipline and Punish. “My project is precisely to bring it about that they ‘no longer know what to do.’ . . . This effect is intentional” (PR, 235). Having taken sides with the prisoners against the prison establishment, it would violate the logic of war for Foucault to give usable advice to the enemy. If Foucault refuses to give “constructive” advice to both sides of a power struggle with the aim of reconciling their clashing interests, how then does he understand the strategic role of his own writing? He characterizes his type of social critique as “an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal” (PR, 236). In using the term “refusal” he means that it is not any kind of positive program specifying “what needs to be done.” He does not call for any revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state, as Marx did, or of the state as such, as anarchists do. Relations of power and domination are so omnipresent in the world Foucault describes that overthrowing the state would accomplish little. Overthrowing the state is also unnecessary because domination can and should be resisted locally, at its actual point of contact. This picture remains an image of war, but a war characterized not by a single grand battle but by localized skirmishes. To resist power also means resisting the forms of truth and knowledge interconnected with that form of power. “Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are” (PR, 336). The particular ways in which individuals are classified by a social-scientific “discipline” are essential to their being “disciplined” and subjected to a particular form of power. Thus to “refuse what we are” is simultaneously to undermine the power to which we are subjected. Foucault never suggests that there is any “true” or “original” self or soul that can be liberated by resistance. The very self or soul that “we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

223

subjection much more profound than himself” (DP, 30). The self that resists and refuses is itself a product of the power it is resisting. It is not a matter of recovering in the course of the battle some pure, unviolated self in whose name one resists but of effecting what Foucault at one point calls “subversive recodifications of power relations” (PR, 123). By “subversive recodifications” he means that the enemy’s own weapons can be turned against him, just as the ritual of the scaffold can be subverted into popular rebellion against the king. Only in this sense—in this promise of reversing the battle—can it be said that disciplinary power is “empowering” to those over whom it is exercised. Foucault has often been criticized for failing to provide any moral standard to guide these acts of resistance.6 If power is omnipresent and cannot be eradicated, then one might reasonably hope for some criteria to distinguish better and worse forms of power, to decide what to resist and what to leave in place. Some exercises of disciplinary power, one would like to say, are truly empowering to those over whom they are exercised, while others aim merely to turn a human body into a cog in the machine or to pare away all individuality in the name of what is “normal.” Foucault does not provide any means of making such distinctions. At best, then, his peculiar version of liberation—“essays in refusal”—is incomplete and would have to be supplemented by some other kind of theory and practice. At worst, the argument would go, his relentlessly critical approach undermines any standard of better and worse and thus makes any emancipatory project more difficult. This line of critique is a reasonable one, and until recently it was my own standard response to Foucault. But if Foucault’s war model is taken with absolute consistency, this kind of critique misses the point. I want to qualify what follows by admitting that it is not clear that Foucault intended the war model to be ironclad. The war logic is pursued most thoroughly in Discipline and Punish. He may have softened his stance in the last years of his life. In any case the idea itself is worth pursuing to its logical conclusion. If power is omnipresent and if power relations are everywhere to be understood on the model of war, then Foucault does not need to provide any standard of better and worse forms of power. The “principle of polarity” would make any such standard superfluous. Whatever harms your enemy helps you and vice versa. Under the sway of the logic of war, to resist and refuse is a positive act precisely because it harms the enemy. One does not need any other practical guide to conduct. By resisting the enemy, one hopes to reverse the tide of battle. But if the previously less powerful antagonist gains the advantage through some turn of events, there is no reason to stop at equality. That would contradict the logic of battle. Foucault’s own practical interventions appear to side with the relatively powerless (e.g., prisoners). But he never embraces equality of

224

James Read

power as a goal, or suggests that the battle would stop at this point. On the contrary, he specifically affirms in “The Subject and Power” essay that “every strategy of confrontation dreams of becoming a relationship of power and every relationship of power tends, both through its intrinsic course of development and when frontally encountering resistances, to become a winning strategy” (PR, 346). This would presumably hold for reversals of power as well. The successful overthrow of a regime of domination tends to become “a winning strategy”—that is, aims to become a new form of domination. Empowerment of one group, following the logic of war, necessarily entails disempowerment of another. This obviously undermines any ideal of universal emancipation, and leads to the kind of critique of Foucault’s “incomplete” version of emancipation outlined above. But if Foucault’s embrace of the logic of war is complete, then the critique simply mistakes the nature of Foucault’s project from the beginning. It tries to turn Foucault into an updated version of Marx when he is more a reincarnation of Machiavelli. As we have seen, Machiavelli was entirely comfortable with the idea that a republic enjoyed its freedom at the expense of someone else. The senate and the people of Rome could hold in check their war against each other and enjoy collective public liberty only by cooperatively conquering someone else. Foucault’s actors and battles are more fine-grained than Machiavelli’s, the spread of power is much broader, and new weapons are in play that Machiavelli could not have imagined. Nevertheless, what Machiavelli says of the senate and people of Rome could equally serve for a description of the kind of constant warfare analyzed by Foucault: “So the desire to defend freedom made each one try to prevail so much that he oppressed the other. . . . When men seek not to fear, they begin to make others fear; and the injury that they dispel from themselves they put upon another, as if it were necessary to offend or to be offended” (D I. 46; 95). Machiavelli here is simply reporting that the liberation of one comes at another’s expense, not protesting against it or suggesting any alternative. It may in the end have been the same with Foucault. Such a perspective on social and political life is not necessarily “nihilistic.” Nihilism means belief in nothing, whereas one who sees the world as an inescapable zero-sum battle can believe passionately in the victory of his own side. It is also not incompatible with a passionate dedication to liberty, as long as one is willing to accept that liberty for one is oppression for another.

VI This zero-sum view of power is, however, completely incompatible with the ideal of universal human emancipation that has held sway since the En-

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

225

lightenment, and that has older roots in a number of religious traditions. If one hopes to preserve the universal ideal yet admit the omnipresence of power, one must somehow challenge the zero-sum, war-model of power that has been the focus of this essay. What makes such a challenge difficult is that the actual description of power relations provided by the authors examined here rings true in many respects. One cannot dismiss them as myopic, biased, or merely jaundiced observers of the human condition. The hypothesis that there exists some principle of conservation in human affairs such that gain for one necessarily entails loss for another is very old and is not limited to Western thought.7 What is gained on one side and lost on another under this hypothesis is not always described specifically as power, but it often is. The idea of war is also of course very ancient and not limited to any one civilization or intellectual tradition. The idea that there is some close connection between war and the nature of power more generally is not limited to the four theorists discussed in this essay. But these four present an appropriate starting point for any attempt either to confirm or challenge the zero-sum power hypothesis more generally. The argument that the collective picture presented here strengthens the zero-sum hypothesis is fairly straightforward. If these four theorists, so different from one another in approach, historical context, guiding problems, and political aims nevertheless all conclude that more power for one is less for another and that the exercise of power looks a lot like the practice of war, then this tends to confirm the hypothesis in the same way that a scientific hypothesis is strengthened when differently designed experiments agree in their conclusions. How then would one proceed to challenge the zero-sum power hypothesis? The fact that nearly all human relationships, and especially the politically most significant ones, are characterized by conflict guarantees that a zero-sum, war-modeled account of power will always have some resonance. That by itself may be sufficient to explain the persistence of the zero-sum idea. But very few human relationships are purely conflictual. A zero-sum model of power always runs into some embarrassment in accounting for the common interests in the mix. In Foucault’s case, for instance, the claim that the conspicuous failures of the penitentiary system are really victories for someone, on some other level, sounds forced. A more natural reading of the evidence would indicate a collective failure with no victory for anyone. If common interests could always be taken for granted while conflicting interests always required our active attention, there might be some reason to limit the concept of power to the conflictual side of social and political relations. But in fact common interests also have to be actively pursued; they do not take care of themselves. There is no reason why, for example, two rivals who, despite their conflicts, actively cooperate to avoid a war destructive to the interests of both sides cannot be said to gain power together

226

James Read

when they prevent that war (or lose power together if they fail). (This of course applies only to wars that both sides genuinely wish to avoid; this is not always the case.) Once the war commences, both sides may indeed be forced to adopt the “principle of polarity,” but the very fact that it is forced upon them can be considered evidence of a collective loss of power. For these and other reasons, the zero-sum hypothesis is open to challenge. This is not of course the same as a refutation of that hypothesis. Even if the power of one does not invariably come at another’s expense, there will always be some cases where this is true to some degree, in some important respect. To argue that power should not be modeled on pure conflict does not mean that it should be modeled on pure cooperation either. Within limits, the zero-sum hypothesis can be a useful analytical tool. (We use it every time we count gains and losses of seats in an election.) But once one models the exercise of power on the practice of war, these limits disappear. The minimum conclusion suggested by this essay is that we should hesitate to reach for war as the intellectual weapon of choice in describing power conflicts, as though we had no discretion in the matter. Otherwise we risk proceeding to extremes in a way typical of war, whereby every unresolved conflict becomes a war, every war a clash of civilizations, and every clash of civilizations a war of the gods.

NOTES 1. My attempts to understand the nature of power commenced more than two decades ago. I want to thank Harvey Mansfield for encouraging and supporting a wide-ranging and unorthodox dissertation topic that other advisors might have discouraged. My understanding of Machiavelli also owes a great deal to Harvey’s writings and lectures. Primary sources used in this chapter are abbreviated in the text as follows: OW D P DP PR L EL

Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). Michel Foucault, Power. Vol. 3 of the series Essential Works of Foucault, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 1994). Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, 1968). Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928).

Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault

227

2. For introduction to the enormous literature on power, see Steven Lukes, ed., Power (New York: New York University Press, 1986); Thomas E. Wartenberg, The Forms of Power: From Domination to Transformation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 1990); Thomas E. Wartenberg, ed., Rethinking Power (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992). 3. See for example E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939); Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) and Theory of International Relations (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For a debate between realists and their critics, see David A. Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 4. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980 [1960]). 5. See for example, John C. Calhoun’s “Remarks on Receiving Abolition Petitions,” February 6, 1837, where Calhoun describes the abolitionist petitions as a “deadly war” fought against “twelve of these sovereign States.” John C. Calhoun, The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 13, ed. Clyde Wilson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1980), 392. 6. See, for instance, Thomas McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason” in Rethinking Power, 121–48. 7. For descriptions of ancient, zero-sum understandings of power from outside the Western tradition, see Benedict Anderson, “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture” in Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); and J. G. A. Pocock, “Ritual, Language, Power” in Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

11 Montesquieu’s Political Science A Cure for Machiavellianism? Janet Dougherty

In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu develops a radically new political science by combining Descartes’s standard for science in general with Machiavelli’s understanding of political things. The aim of Montesquieu’s science is to secure liberty without resorting to “machiavellian” means. Although he allies himself with Machiavelli in his disdain for “imaginary republics” and unattainable or rarely attainable perfections, Montesquieu repudiates both force and guile.1 He educates his readers to recognize that the variety of laws that govern human beings leaves us free to act and to judge for ourselves. Moderate and, for the most part, indirect governments that allow for a distribution of political power acknowledge and enhance this ability.2 The distribution of power is most visible in a constitutional government like that of England but may be discerned, for example, in a nation like France in which intermediary powers have established themselves historically,3 setting limits to the power of the monarch. Moderate government prevails over immoderate government as it promotes social contact. The more human beings interact with one another, the less they succumb to the overwhelming passion of fear and the more they can see that they are fundamentally akin. Enlightenment undermines the prejudices that keep men and women from rationally pursuing their true interests. Montesquieu displays the height of enlightenment in the comprehensive account of laws that constitutes his political science. His interest in writing The Spirit of the Laws is to help people “cure” themselves of their prejudices,4 especially the crude machiavellianism that rigidly divides humans into princes who conquer by force or by guile and people who can do little but submit. Montesquieu draws on Cartesian science to help discern the role of nature in governing 229

230

Janet Dougherty

human affairs. His science of politics incorporates the laws of nature along with laws that affect human beings in particular with a view to clarifying the possibility of liberty under moderate government. Historically, the liberty Montesquieu’s political science promotes has supplanted the greatest political virtues. Having accepted Machiavelli’s association of political virtue with the art of war, Montesquieu substitutes for the love of virtue the pursuit of free trade, including the free exchange of ideas, from which will come all that is good for human beings. But commerce by itself does not reliably promote good judgment.5 This paper has four parts. The first concerns in general Montesquieu’s political science and the education that promotes liberty. The second outlines the dependence of Montesquieu’s political science on Descartes’s philosophic revision of science in general. The third focuses on English liberty, commerce, and slavery. Finally, I give an account of the relation of Montesquieu’s teaching to Machiavelli’s.

MONTESQUIEU’S SCIENCE OF LIBERTY AND THE LAWS Montesquieu’s design, he tells us in the Preface to The Spirit of the Laws, is, like God’s, in the design of his work. The design may be difficult to discern— the work is very detailed and complex—but it is not hidden. In Montesquieu’s political science, laws of nature combine with laws that govern or relate to every conceivable aspect of human life, for humans have “free souls” capable of resisting in rational and orderly ways the laws that nature imposes on us as corporeal beings.6 The laws of nature, or of matter in motion, lead to passions that enslave only the most primitive humans.7 Strong or despotic leaders may successfully impose their will on a limited domain; their power is ephemeral and depends upon the ability of one man to obliterate opportunities for the enlightenment of many. By contrast, the power of Montesquieu’s political education arises from his ability to combat the reduction of political things to a few necessary and supposedly inescapable rules. He documents a wide variety of identifiable factors that govern men and women. A multiplicity of laws, both natural and political, prevails, but no set of them completely determines human activity (SL I.1; see also XIV). The more men and women know, the more they can both adjust their wills to unalterable facts and redirect phenomena in accord with their wills.8 In acknowledging laws that we cannot change, we enhance the possibility of legislating for more or less free citizens. Montesquieu refers to many examples, but he rarely points to a leader whose greatness would inspire emulation. Rather, just as modern science strives to discern and articulate universally applicable laws, Montesquieu has sought principles from which all else in human affairs follows (SL Pref-

Montesquieu’s Political Science

231

ace) and which allow him to formulate laws that comprehend an unlimited variety of examples. Only the most ambitious thinkers will try to follow the example Montesquieu himself sets in writing The Spirit of the Laws. His comprehensive knowledge ranks him among the philosophers, and in his work he presents a challenge to the greatest of ancient and early modern thinkers. But he writes for every reader, especially those who concern themselves with practical matters. All readers, Montesquieu thinks, can find in his work the means to educate themselves as citizens, seeking out means to temper the authority of any dominating power, human or non-human. Not exemplary virtues but moderation most effectually produces the greatest benefits for men and women in society. Moderation engenders both liberty and the acceptance of limited constraints. With a fuller understanding of oneself, Montesquieu indicates, comes caution, and even the love of “one’s duties, one’s prince, one’s fatherland, one’s laws” (SL Preface) unless these conflict with one another.9 While facilitating progress, Montesquieu’s political science discourages revolutionary activity and in general the striving for perfection in human things. Montesquieu begins with a quick account (SL I.1) of the “laws of nature” in which he replaces Hobbes’s description of the state of nature. Natural man is at first timid. The desires for sex and society partially overcome natural timidity and put an end to the equality of solitary life. With society develop occasions both for conflict and for the development of reason, and thus law (SL I.3). “Law, in general, is human reason,” Montesquieu says. Irrational passions demonstrate the power that the laws of nature describe. Nevertheless, the same passions that resist reason must provide the springs of government, both moderate and immoderate. Virtue (the love of equality), honor (the love of distinction), and fear are the primary political passions. Only fear seems to arise entirely by nature, without the intervention of education and law. Fear characterizes the subjects of despotic governments. Similarly, the forces of nature are despotic when given free reign. Montesquieu’s image of despotism is a seraglio guarded by eunuchs. At the other extreme, virtue and therefore republican government, at least that of a democratic republic, requires an unnatural sort of discipline.10 Although the principle of honor is, “in a certain fashion, bizarre” (SL IV.2; V.19), it is easier than virtue to engender among those who desire to distinguish themselves. While most men and women resist bizarre or irrational codes of behavior, those who submit to them serve ironically to moderate government that might otherwise dominate excessively. When nobles rule without a monarch they must exhibit at least a low sort of virtue: moderation is “the soul of these governments” (SL III.4). Aristocracy is both one of many kinds of government and in a sense the generic model for government in The Spirit of the Laws. Rather

232

Janet Dougherty

than describing a best regime,11 or even distinguishing good and bad forms of government, Montesquieu contrasts moderate with immoderate government. All moderate government is characterized by the assertion of a standard that elevates the citizens above base subservience to nature’s laws. Moderate governments are distinguished either by intermediary powers that maintain a standard the monarch must recognize or by a distribution of power that prevents any ruler from dominating totally, leaving citizens in a certain fashion free. Men and women acquire “free souls” through a sense of their superiority to and their abhorrence of despotism. Moderate government in general imitates hereditary aristocracy by asserting the superiority of humans over beasts and natural phenomena in general. Montesquieu contrasts good modern governments both with ancient, immoderate republics and with religious government that aims toward virtues that most men and women cannot be expected to achieve.12 But while liberty seems to be the opposite of despotism, even liberty can be excessive. Moderns are educated by “our fathers,” “our masters,” and “the world” (SL IV.4), and these authorities do not agree. Specifically, religion is at odds with the teaching of the world, which in Montesquieu’s France promotes honor (SL IV.2). A true understanding of the world, by contrast, illustrates the laws of nature. “Our fathers” must be the priests who teach Christian dogma and support obedience to paternal authority. “Our masters” could be powerful political authorities but are more likely to be the ancients whose work, in Montesquieu’s time, still predominated in schools. Montesquieu unequivocally and openly supports scientific inquiry and the widespread understanding of natural phenomena.13 But nature alone does not distinguish worthy from unworthy ends. Montesquieu does not simply reject the teachings of Christianity. He associates Christian teaching with ancient republics, which he respectfully acknowledges as admirable but painful, and he almost never mentions Jesus.14 He borrows from Christianity the egalitarian love of humanity and the belief in the dignity of each human individual.15 Nevertheless, modern—that is, Cartesian—science provides the starting point for the new education that Montesquieu develops further to include a comprehensive account of political things.

CARTESIAN SCIENCE: THE FOUNDATION OF MONTESQUIEU’S SCIENCE OF POLITICS Montesquieu’s political science rests on a thoroughly modern foundation. The Cartesian structure of modern science depends upon the recognition that a very limited set of propositions can be known unequivocally and that only unequivocal truths can form the foundation of a science. Such truths depend on nothing but the transparency of the mind of the thinker to him-

Montesquieu’s Political Science

233

self, not on first principles that the thinker derives from the works of others (especially the ancients or the Bible) or from the senses. Descartes’s proof of the existence of God in The Meditations (Meditation III) is in fact a demonstration that what is thought unequivocally has being or truth; it is not in any way a proof of the separate existence of a providential or merciful being.16 The radical limitation set by the standard of unequivocal thought does not require that the scientist regard humans as mere automata. Similarly, Montesquieu is no thoroughgoing determinist. The passions to which human beings are subject need not determine our behavior. As we have seen, this is evident in Montesquieu’s account of the laws of nature that affect human beings.17 In The Passions of the Soul Descartes sets a high standard for the control by each of us of his or her passions and their physiological consequences. We are capable of striving toward virtue, Descartes asserts, and to practice virtue is “never to lack the will to undertake and accomplish all things that one decides to be best” knowing that nothing really belongs to one but “the free disposition of one’s will.”18 The emphasis here is on “decides.” The good in itself is neither knowable nor meaningful. Rather, there are a variety of things and circumstances that human beings experience as good. In The Passions of the Soul Descartes exhorts his readers to strive to control their passions even to the point of retraining the physiological responses that constitute them as a means of facilitating the pursuit of the things we experience as good.19 To know what we can control and what is beyond our ability is indispensable to a satisfactory life, much as to recognize what is knowable and what is not knowable is indispensable to the development of a science. Montesquieu’s political thought completes the Cartesian approach to the study of man in The Passions. While The Spirit of the Laws demonstrates Montesquieu’s respect for a wide range of political phenomena Descartes neglects, Montesquieu interprets these phenomena in accord with Cartesian science. Human virtues are a modification of the passions. One of the implications of Descartes’s scientifically based ethics is that choices that vitiate the pursuit of virtue, namely despotism of any sort, must be repudiated. After all, to exert self-control one must be free from external compulsion; one must have the liberty to direct one’s actions in accord with one’s will. Montesquieu’s political thought facilitates the pursuit of the Cartesian species of virtue by promoting both the liberty of the citizen and free trade. The diversity of things men and women experience as good replaces the hierarchy of goods that characterized ancient ethical and political thought. Without denying any of the characteristics that distinguish superior individuals, Montesquieu reinterprets virtue of any sort as part of the diversity of behavior accessible to humans. All accomplishment is evidence of the greatness of the species. In comprehending the human variety that includes

234

Janet Dougherty

the exemplary emperor of China as well as Plato, Lycurgus and Christ, Montesquieu redirects our admiration into a sober assessment of their achievement. He strives to transform fanatical excess into moderation by emphasizing the variety of distinguished humans rather than setting them up as standards by which to judge others or ourselves. Modern, enlightened political societies presumably do not need heroes to admire. Similarly, they do not need men of extraordinary virtue to govern them. As long as free trade prevails and the desire of some to dominate over others is limited, administration can for the most part replace government. Various excellences can be cultivated in private by those who admire them. They can just as well and as freely be ignored by others as they see fit. Natural passions lead to the establishment of societies by bringing human beings together into associations, and such associations in turn create new possibilities for choice and freedom. Tocqueville’s understanding of the art of association as “the mother of all the arts” is a direct implication of Montesquieu’s political science, for if there is no good in itself, there is no universal standard of human merit apart from what others can verify and experience.20 Political statesmanship, if necessary at times, is only as good as its effects, and its effects must include the elimination of the need to rely upon great statesmen. Similarly, while scientific inquiry is an activity of few men and women, its basic underpinnings are accessible to all who have experienced a general, modern education. The standard of freedom, unlike Christian virtue and the excellences of the ancients, is realizable wherever enlightenment can reach. In this context, Montesquieu’s discussion of the constitution of England provides a vehicle for enlightenment. It is an example of the political moderation that results when citizens assess and protect their interests but no one simply rules. The English system of distributed powers provides an image of an association of citizens assumed to be capable of responsible acts.

ENGLISH LIBERTY, COMMERCE, SLAVERY, AND GOOD TASTE Descartes distinguishes the power of “animal spirits” to produce passions from the liberty of the individual to direct his own affairs. Similarly, political moderation depends upon the distinction between the powers that rule societies and the liberty that results when no power dominates. Montesquieu never lays out criteria for the formation of constitutions in general. Such criteria may encourage immoderate attempts to impose a constitution on unreceptive subjects. Rather, Montesquieu offers the constitution of England as an example of a regime that aims at liberty. He presents the constitution not as a pattern to copy but as an image in which to see clearly the various powers humans can exert over one another. Indeed, the government

Montesquieu’s Political Science

235

of England is not in every respect moderate, although the constitution of England does display liberty “as in a mirror.”21 Montesquieu’s discussion of English government and society has several parts. I will focus first on book XI, chapter 6, the most famous part of The Spirit of the Laws. Book XI treats “the laws which form political liberty in its relation to the constitution.” Book XII continues the study of liberty, this time with respect to the citizen. In XI.3 Montesquieu contrasts liberty with “independence;” liberty is “the right to do all that the laws permit.” For there to be liberty, “power must arrest power” (SL XI.4). The arrangement of powers in the government of England is not determined by a single fundamental document; it was not explicitly framed by English founders. Montesquieu cites Tacitus (“On the Mores of the Germans”) to indicate that the origin of “this beautiful system is found in the woods” (SL XI.6). Although it is very different, French government has a common historical origin, Montesquieu claims, with the English system. In the last books of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu takes pains to show that France too has inherited a system that moderates the power of the king. But moderate government in England is self-perpetuating. In Montesquieu’s view, England tends to promote its own form of government among its colonies. Still, while the citizens of the newly founded United States did have some previous experience of liberty, they surely did not find their system of government ready made. Just as the system inherited from the early Germans was modified over the course of English history, the American system has its own character.22 Certain aspects of the English constitution so impressed the American Founders that they chose to institute them in the newly established United States in an act as revolutionary, in Hamilton’s view at least, as the actual rebellion against British rule.23 They were especially impressed by what Montesquieu calls the distribution of power among legislative, executive, and judicial authorities. Montesquieu warns that there would be no liberty if the power of judging were not separated from the other two powers. Even more emphatically, Montesquieu claims that “[e]verything would be lost if the same man, or the same body of men, exercised . . . all three powers.” Those who make the law, which embodies the “general will” of the state, must not execute it, presumably because the law can be too “rigorous.” In XI.6 Montesquieu praises executive veto power, advocates the judgment of the accused by his peers, and indicates the superiority of representative government. The army must be led by the executive power although the executive may only consent to the levy of funds, which is primarily the responsibility of the legislature. The body of the people must have the power to legislate because “in a free state” each man is considered able to govern himself. But Montesquieu concludes the chapter by indicating that the government he has been describing aims at “extreme liberty.” He, by contrast, believes that “the excess even of reason

236

Janet Dougherty

is not always desirable and . . . [that] men accommodate themselves better almost always to middles than to extremes.” Montesquieu returns to the discussion of the English political climate several times, most notably in book XIX on “Laws in their Relation to the Principles that Form the General Spirit, the Mores and the Manners of a Nation.” In the chapter on England (SL XIX.27), Montesquieu confirms that this nation would possess liberty, saying that it “would love its liberty prodigiously because this liberty would be true, and . . . in order to defend [its liberty] the country would sacrifice its goods, its ease, its interests.” Individual citizens would reason for themselves, even though they would not necessarily reason well. The society would tend always to be worked up (échaufée) and could easily be led by its passions: “it would be easy for those who govern it to make it undertake enterprises against its true interests.” Such a nation then, while free, would not necessarily be happy. In chapter 6 of the same book, entitled, “That one must not undertake to correct everything,” Montesquieu exhorts caution in altering the laws that govern a somewhat corrupt but pleasantly sociable nation. He is thinking of France. “Would that we be left as we are,” he says. If reason indeed “never produces great effects on the mind of man,” why not rely on the passions and the good taste that communication among peoples promotes (SL XIX.8)? Vanity is in some ways preferable to pride in governing society, according to Montesquieu, and may promote not only liberty but even the love of liberty. Although the distinctions vanity makes among men and women ignore merit of the highest sort, this vice may be more conducive to happiness. A reader may well disdain such an appeal to our baser tendencies, but if the political climate of England induces uneasiness, its meteorological state has even worse effects (SL XIV.13). The general spirits of nations differ and, Montesquieu warns, a legislator must follow that spirit “as long as it is not contrary to the principles of government” for “we do nothing better than what we do freely” (SL XIX.5). Just as passions almost always have greater effects than human reason, so also it is more prudent to promote liberty by indirect means than through constitutional reform.24 Despite the influence of Montesquieu’s ideas on the American Founders, he would not have endorsed their radical act in instituting a government. Foundings require political virtue, and political virtue, or love of the fatherland and of equality (Avertissement), is rare. Montesquieu associates political virtue with moral or Christian virtue, which set too high a standard for any society.25 Although he admires the highest things that men can attain, Montesquieu believes gentleness is more effectual in promoting the health of a political climate than any sort of excellence, while ignorance and laziness cause the most harm.26 Commercial activity of the sort that develops new needs and satisfies the most basic ones is, then, beneficial. When men and women pursue their private interests,

Montesquieu’s Political Science

237

they indirectly promote the common good and even the interests of humanity in general. Still, the natural desire for society does almost nothing to eliminate the danger of crass and narrow individualism. Rather than looking to corrective political leadership to reduce the danger, Montesquieu emphasizes history and commerce.27 The general spirit derives from the particular circumstances of a nation’s history and shapes citizens as parts of society. Historical examples abound in Montesquieu’s work, whereas he ignores theoretical examples. He thinks that no lawgiver who ignores the collective history of his subjects has much hope of success. But history demonstrates in general the development and the benefits of commerce.28 With the availability of a wide range of goods for men and women to choose, a more or less natural ranking of goods becomes manifest. Montesquieu appears confident that mass culture will not overwhelm good private judgment. Scientific education is the key to good judgment among sensible administrators who must govern moderate regimes. Where political leaders are necessary, they must exemplify enlightened self-interest by recognizing that their longterm benefits depend upon the healthy economy of the nation and even the healthy economy of its international partners. Their leadership exhibits at most a vestigial and thoroughly hidden version of princely virtù as Machiavelli understood it. The goal of the leadership is to avert the crises in which a machiavellian prince would emerge. Montesquieu remains silent about what one must do when a founding becomes necessary. Hopefully, the enlightened pursuit of common interests will prevent society from deteriorating into a collection of narrowly selfish individuals or petty despots. Before beginning his discussion of the laws in relation to commerce, Montesquieu calls upon the Muses to aid him in his work, signaling that in some respect this is the most artful part of The Spirit of the Laws. He closes his invocation by claiming that the Muses wish him “to speak with reason.” He calls reason “the most perfect, the most noble and the most exquisite of our senses” (XXIV.Invocation), an odd categorization. The Muses must ease his labor and give its product some of their charm. Economics is not a lovely art, and Montesquieu seems to fear that it will not capture the reader’s attention. But commerce is the key to all he strives to accomplish: “Commerce cures destructive prejudices” (XX.1). He acknowledges with Plato that it corrupts pure mores, but he is willing to tolerate some corruption, for “the laws of commerce perfect mores for the same reason that these same laws ruin mores.” It causes men of different nations to compare their ways. From this much good results “as we see every day” (XX.1). Montesquieu attributes to the spirit of commerce a tendency to promote peace and a “sentiment of exact justice opposed . . . to too rigid a sense of moral virtue” (XX.2). While the speculations of scholastics led to widespread suffering, by contrast “the avarice of princes [caused] the establishment of a

238

Janet Dougherty

thing that places it in a certain fashion outside of their power.” Usury is more beneficial than destructive of prosperity. Greedy princes have since begun “to govern themselves with more wisdom than they themselves had thought possible. . . . We have begun to be cured of our machiavellianism,29 and we will be cured of it every day” (XXI.21). The prejudice Montesquieu refers to as “machiavellianism” presumes that the good of one nation requires overt dominance over others. Montesquieu’s science leads to trust that when political and economic power is distributed, goods become available for selfish citizens and nations to share. Free commerce is the vehicle of enlightenment. Vanity and love of fashion promote commercial activity and develop taste (XIX.8, 9). His confidence in the benevolent powers of commerce is limited, however, by his hatred of slavery. If all could see slavery as a violation of self-evident right, presumably they would abolish such practices. Montesquieu speaks of slavery as unnatural. But commerce facilitates slavery, and the commerce in ideas does not necessarily hinder its spread. Shame is a passion Montesquieu considers general, but it needs to be provoked and is felt only by individuals conscious that they possess “free souls.”30 Although he allows that the evils of slavery are not always equally grave, Montesquieu condemns slavery, declaring that “[a]ll men are born equal” (XV.7). Slavery is not good by its nature. It is useful neither to master nor to slave: to the slave, because he can do nothing through virtue; to the master because . . . he accustoms himself insensibly to the lack of all the moral virtue. (XV.1)

Christianity is Montesquieu’s ally in promoting the elimination of slavery “in our climates.” In attacking slavery where it still persisted, as in the United States, he becomes strident. He means to provoke shame, a useful tool in eliminating prejudices that drown out “the sweet voice of nature” (XXVI.4) and cause us to renounce gentleness and humanity (XV.3).31 Selfrespect, Montesquieu suggests, brings with it a sense of shame at the subhuman treatment of similar beings. He expects behavior to follow ideas that illuminate our common nature as dignified beings, combating the prejudices that support slavery, even when these ideas must compete with narrow self-interest (XV.9).

A CURE FOR MACHIAVELLIANISM? In Montesquieu’s view political science deters excesses. His anti-machiavellianism consists in a rejection of the activity of princes who strive to create political orders, responding to subjects’ claims only when necessary to preserve princely power. For Machiavelli there is an unbridgeable chasm be-

Montesquieu’s Political Science

239

tween honor-loving princes and the people in general, who love security more than anything else. Like Hobbes, Montesquieu rests his hopes on science rather than on princely leadership. Both thinkers follow Machiavelli in substituting a sober assessment of facts for the admiration of extraordinary qualities. Montesquieu purportedly offers an objective, scientific account of all the laws that govern humans. His science reveals a continuum among humans who are always more or less capable of enlightened self-government. However limited and narrowly self-interested, men and women are rarely so inferior to another of their species as to justify absolute rule. In writing The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu’s primary motivation is to promote scientific education and to elucidate its implications for the behavior of citizens. Enlightenment accrues to individuals and even to nations through peaceful exposure to a manifold of particulars. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu guides readers by articulating his principles or general rules, using them to organize all the phenomena available to him. To make himself clear he must invent new words and give old words new meaning. He interprets the words virtue and honor in true Machiavellian style, although not in Machiavellian terms. He revises the vocabulary of politics so that the order he sees in widely various phenomena may emerge. Montesquieu rejects the ancient, specifically Aristotelian, idea of politics as an architectonic science aiming at the greatest good for human beings. In doing so, he is a direct descendent of Machiavelli, who denounced “imaginary republics” and those who prefer to live in their illusory domains. His work owes much to Machiavelli’s project in that it is a model of indirect government primarily using reason to promote and defend moderation. Montesquieu counts on the experience of freedom to enlighten citizens, that is, to inculcate an awareness of the ways in which all human beings are fundamentally akin. Without a despot to terrorize his subjects’ souls, he is confident that the taste for liberty will prevail. The commercial exchange of goods and ideas gives men and women an opportunity to develop “free souls” and to abolish their natural tendency toward slavishness. The enlightenment that obviates machiavellian virtue requires not the philosophical grasp of the truth but the awareness of what is possible and the hopeful attachment to one’s own good. It is in fact a further development of Machiavelli’s project. Montesquieu acknowledges the need for political orders, but he does not rely on the virtue of those capable of organizing them. He extends Machiavelli’s distrust of those who would impose too high a standard of virtue on their fellow citizens. Montesquieu challenges even the distinction between princes and people. Some men understand the nature of things more fully than others, but none can set standards for, or rule fully over, others. Just as “intermediary powers” with a will of their own animate moderate monarchical government, any regime that is not despotic must leave room for

240

Janet Dougherty

“free souls” who judge for themselves. The opportunity to reflect upon the greatest goods for humans is a commodity for which only a few develop the taste, but many men and women will consider how to promote the freedoms most can enjoy. At the same time, science replaces princely virtù. Political science benefits from the comparison of nations that respond in various ways to human needs. Commerce among nations facilitates a kind of rule that is so indirect that no prince is visible. Nonetheless, religion is a useful means to promote enlightenment. Christianity has taught us humanity, Montesquieu says. He endorses the teaching of Christianity without ever making use of the name of Jesus,32 relying instead on the “voice of nature” to condemn slavery of all sorts. To follow Montesquieu’s enlightened version of the “true religion” is to acknowledge as a fundamental truth that all men and women would thrive under moderate government and that despotism of any sort is corrupt at its heart. If prejudice alone can support slavery, it follows that freedom depends upon the enlightenment that cures readers of their prejudices (XV.3). Religion is useful when it indirectly promotes enlightened rule. In nations that have endured despotism, religion and labor can help mitigate their slavery and give subjects some experience of self-direction. Montesquieu treats political orders as schools for the enlightenment of citizens. There is no single model in The Spirit of the Laws of a good regime. Moderate government differs both from despotism and from the ancient republics that required a virtuous body of citizens. Moderate regimes do not require political virtue but leave citizens free to pursue their good as they see fit. In his distrust of the machiavellian tendencies of leaders to create radically new orders, Montesquieu implicitly disparages the work of some of his greatest admirers.33 He reinterprets the love of the good (virtue) as the love of a republic, and in doing so he abandons the political aspiration toward an unequivocal human good that must have sustained the American Founders, the good of self-government in accord with reason and choice (Federalist #1). A written constitution is an attempt directly to shape, not merely to reflect, the general spirit of the people that animates it. Montesquieu does not prescribe effectual means to engender an appropriate animating national spirit when history fails to provide enough support for liberty. While their statesmanlike virtues are not to be counted upon in the American republic (Federalist #10), the founders do not consider them obsolete. Clearly the difference between the situation in which the framers found themselves and Montesquieu’s France must account for some of the difference in tone between The Spirit of the Laws and The Federalist Papers. Still, the articulation of the U.S. Constitution was not merely a natural outgrowth of the history of the American colonies and the enlightened understanding of human beings in general.

Montesquieu’s Political Science

241

The success of the American Founders was in part based on the cultivation of a common animating spirit, however eroded we find it in the twenty-first century. At the same time they persuaded citizens that reason combined with self-interest could rule, they engendered awe and reverence for the declaration of independence and the U.S. Constitution. This was a demonstration of exemplary statesmanship demanded by the current crisis. But “the idea of rights” and the awe of the founding documents has worn thin.34 By disparaging political virtue in the highest sense, the success of Montesquieu’s political philosophy mars and undermines the Founders’ work. The scientific and egalitarian tendencies he endorsed and promoted are at war with the reverence that gave Americans a common spirit and therefore a sense both of security and of liberty.

CONCLUSION Montesquieu’s anti-machiavellian political science is an endorsement of liberty based upon the enlightenment of citizens. It presumes that self-interest can promote the common benefit of a nation as long as the power of each group is limited. It relies on commerce to sort out the proper value of goods and ideas. It supersedes Machiavelli’s thought by treating even the virtue of a prince as imaginary. As Montesquieu sees it, science alone can rule moderately and well. Although Montesquieu rejects “machiavellianism,” he is a genuine follower of Machiavelli in his pursuit of generally realizable rather than exemplary virtues; for like princely power, widespread enlightenment displaces the pursuit of the highest human goals. But free trade of all sorts does not suffice to soften harsh mores, especially when they usurp the names of piety and virtue. The political education Montesquieu offers in The Spirit of the Laws demands that the reader broaden her view of humanity beyond the teaching of any regime, however exemplary. In its breadth Montesquieu’s inquiry into the variety of regimes is a model for further inquiry. It does not allow us to rely upon the sort of political activity that requires an assertion of excellence difficult to integrate into society in general. While a new founding would indeed require princely virtue, if Montesquieu is correct the vision of a goal high enough to keep extraordinary virtue alive runs the risk of undermining political moderation. Cartesian political science moderates Machiavellian virtue by recognizing the laws that govern continuous adjustments of power to preserve liberties already attained. Moderate rule, similarly, dispenses with a rigid set of principles that reflect and encourage virtue in favor of separate powers in constant mutual tension to limit the effect of each. Ancient political virtue and Machiavellian princely virtue demand that liberty and power, separated in liberal

242

Janet Dougherty

politics as Montesquieu conceived it, be combined.35 The philosophic education that permits us to see the limitations of liberal political thought demands a return to the books in which those virtues come to light. But liberal political education requires no return to the ancients or to Machiavelli. It requires a sober assessment of the political significance of the distinction between the simply excellent and what can in practice be achieved. In accord with that assessment, moderate political rule demands the careful redirection of passions that would lead us to unattainable heights. Moderation is the excellence of enlightened human beings.

NOTES 1. Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 61. 2. See Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989). 3. Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Loix, (Paris: Société les Belles Lettres, 1950), XXVIII–XXXI. Hereafter references will appear parenthetically in the text in the form of SL book.chapter. See also Iris Cox, “History of Laws,” in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, ed. David W. Carrithers (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). 4. See Montesquieu, SL, Preface, especially 12–13. 5. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 262. 6. Montesquieu uses the expression in XI.6, “On the Constitution of England:” “as in a free state every man, considered to have a free soul, should be governed by himself. . . .” 7. See Thomas Pangle’s discussion of “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God in Montesquieu” in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Allan Bloom (Washington: AEI Press, 1990), 24–35. 8. Aron, Raymond, Main Currents in Sociological Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1965). See especially 48–49 and 56. 9. Cf. SL IV.4. Montesquieu attempts to make modern education coherent by basing it upon Cartesian science. See Stanley Rosen, The Elusiveness of the Ordinary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). 10. SL V.4. See Sharon Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of the Laws,” in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, 58. 11. For a contrasting view see Henry J. Merry, Montesquieu’s System of Natural Government (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1970), 320. 12. See Pierre Manent, La Cité de l’Homme (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 31f (on Montesquieu’s association of Christian or moral with ancient virtue). 13. See Montesquieu’s essays, especially “Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences” in Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Roger Callois [Paris: Gallimard, 1949–1951], vol. I.53–57; “Essai sur les causes qui peuvent affecter les esprits et les caractères” in Oeuvres completes, vol. II.39-68; and “Essai sur le goût dans les choses de la nature et de l’art” in Oeuvres completes, vol. II.1240–63. 14. See SL IV.6, entitled, “On Some Greek Institutions.” In SL XXIV.5 Montesquieu does mention Jesus in a discussion of Calvinism. In XXIV.13 he refers to Christ in a discussion of bad laws. Montesquieu prefers stoicism.

Montesquieu’s Political Science

243

15. SL XV.7; see also XXIV.1, 3. 16. In a lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Santa Fe in September 2006, I develop fully this reading of Descartes’s Third Méditation. Others have acknowledged in passing Descartes’s influence on Montesquieu, but I do not know of any thorough account of this influence. See Anne Cohler, Montesquieu’s Comparative Politics and the Spirit of American Constitutionalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 35; see also Simone Goyard-Fabré, La Philosophie du Droit de Montesquieu (Paris: Librairie C. Kliencksieck, 1973) on Montesquieu’s Newtonian tendencies. 17. See SL I.2 and the first part of section one of this paper. See also XIV, especially XIV.5. 18. René Descartes, Les Passions de l’âme, Part III, article 153. 19. See Descartes, Les Passions de l’âme, I.50. 20. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), II.ii.5.7. 21. SL XI.6; Cf. XI.4, 20. 22. For example, the United States as established by the constitution is a federation of republics, an arrangement Montesquieu endorses (SL IX.I). 23. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Modern Library), no. 1. 24. Montesquieu’s indirect government is gentler than Machiavelli’s version. See Machiavelli, The Prince, XI. 25. SL XXIV.7. See also XIX.6 and IV.6,7. Foundings tend to produce “singular” institutions that impose on humans a standard that they cannot long attain without subjection. In IV.6 Montesquieu explicitly links William Penn with Lycurgus in the “ascendancy they had over their peoples” and “the passions that they subjugated.” Montesquieu admires the genius of founders even while cautioning that the political virtue they instill is contrary to liberty and the spirit of commerce. 26. See SL XVIII, especially 3, 7. 27. See SL III.3. 28. Catherine Larrère, “Montesquieu on Economics and Commerce,” in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, 356; see also 366. 29. The lower case ‘m’ seems to me to distinguish the vulgar version of Machiavelli’s teaching from those ideas that Montesquieu adopted from Machiavelli. For discussion of the distribution of powers as a corrective for the Machiavellian prince, see Michael A. Mosher, “Monarchy’s Paradox: Honor in the Face of Sovereign Power,” in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics, 177. See also Manent, Cours Familier de la Philosophie Politique (Paris: Fayard, 2001). 30. Here Montesquieu is exerting a kind of princely power over his readers, commanding agreement that the ownership of humans is wrong. Montesquieu is not being entirely straightforward. By arousing salutary passions, he means to rule, not merely to educate. Montesquieu draws attention to his methods in SL XV.8. See also two passages in which he uses the expression “God forbid:” XII.6 and XIX.11. 31. In the “Defense of the Spirit of the Laws,” I, paragraph 1, Montesquieu says that he wrote SL in order to make Christianity loved (Montesquieu, “Défense de l’Esprit des Lois” in Oeuvres complètes, vol. II.1121–66). In SL XXIV.7 he confirms that religion speaks to the heart not necessarily to the mind (but see XV.3). In XV.8, however, when arguing against slavery, Montesquieu does not know whether his mind (esprit) or heart is speaking. In XXV.12 he discusses how to detach the soul from religion.

244

Janet Dougherty

32. Montesquieu does occasionally use the names “Jesus” and “Christ,” but almost never when endorsing Christian teachings. See SL XXIV.5 and XXV.13. 33. See “On the manner of composing the Laws,” SL XXIX. 34. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I.ii.6. “The idea of rights is nothing other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world. . . . In America, the man of the people has conceived a lofty idea of political rights because he has political rights.” Contemporary speech about rights is rarely lofty. 35. Pierre Manent, Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Rebecca Balinski (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 55: “By seeing to the heart of the political problem in the conflict between power and liberty, Montesquieu determines the definitive character of liberalism.” And later: “Liberty is produced through the neutralization of the political” (60).

12 New Models and Orders Hume’s Cromwell as Modern Prince Andrew Sabl

David Hume spent perhaps a twentieth of his great History of England discussing the character and conduct of one man: Oliver Cromwell (or “Cromwel”).1 One chapter cannot fully explicate either Hume’s painfully ambivalent portrait of Cromwell or the larger institutional and theoretical lessons Hume drew from his career. But at least one may start by asking how the two are linked, how the “biography” that a study of executive power would fall into if divorced from the study of formal institutions and powers links up with the larger purposes of a work centrally about those institutions and powers, about the development of settled liberty and stable political order.2 Already by the late seventeenth century, Cromwell’s cautionary lessons had turned English “republican” thought toward an overwhelming concern with domestic liberty, away from policies of military expansion and the domestic ambition and dictatorship that such expansionism was now seen to promote. Cromwell was likened to Sulla.3 Hume’s particular telling of the story became so famous a few decades after its writing that rival factions during the French Revolution competitively cited Hume’s History to tar opponents as potential Cromwells, or as opening the door to future Cromwells.4 But perhaps the example also provides lessons beyond the obvious and partisan ones. What can the successful career of a prince who despised constitutions teach us about constitutionalism? Two of Hume’s descriptions of Cromwell are separately famous, but in fact only make sense when combined. In one, Hume describes Cromwell as a singular study in paradox: one of the most eminent and most singular personages, that occurs in history. . . . His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His 245

246

Andrew Sabl

enterprizing genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy; he yet knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artifice, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, though his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; he was engaged in crimes from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation which is, in general, irresistible to human nature. And by using well that authority, which he had attained by fraud and violence, he has lessened, if not overpowered, our detestation of his enormities, by our admiration of his success and of his genius (H V.450, emphasis added).5

In another, Hume calls Cromwell “suited to the age in which he lived, and to that alone.” The very paradoxes and contradictions of Cromwell’s character, says Hume, let him both win people over by his “mean, vulgar, and ridiculous” qualities and command them by his “great, daring, and enterprizing” ones (H VI.5, emphasis added). The first passage makes Cromwell seem an instructive but perhaps derivative Machiavellian case, less good than great, a daring new prince of military origins, and so on.6 (The “if not” in the longer passage above is deliciously ambiguous: it either affirms or denies Machiavelli’s standards of moral judgment.) The second suggests that Cromwell’s character, combining lion, fox and perhaps a few other animals by nature more than device, was not a general model for leadership but a bizarre accident, dependent for its success on the prevalence of wild and unfathomable enthusiasm, whose repetition we should neither expect nor welcome.7 The interplay of circumstance and character (fortuna and virtù as only an eighteenth-century Englishman would translate them?) runs through Hume’s History in general and through his amazed treatment of Cromwell in particular. But Hume, even in high realist mode, is not the same as Machiavelli. The difference lies not only in Hume’s incorrigible sense of justice—he reports Cromwell’s crimes not with Machiavelli’s cool but with clear and occasionally even outraged moral judgments (e.g. H VI.106, 514–15)—but in his sense of how the scope and contours of political prudence must vary along with historical and social change. Hume judged Machiavelli a “great genius” whose reasonings were rendered “extremely defective” by his lack of acquaintance with modern, orderly governments.8 Hume’s Cromwell personifies both the ways in which a modern political genius can update Machiavelli’s insights to craft new forms of mastery and the limits on modern politicians’ aspiration to do so. Cromwell understood the opportunities that a changing society had created for his ambition and seized them; he failed to recognize the hidden resources of modern constitutionalism and was buried by them.

New Models and Orders

247

Hume’s treatment of Cromwell is an exercise in reverse constitutionalism. Just as Rousseau thought The Prince was a hidden warning to republicans,9 Hume’s reflections on the difficult career of constitutional stability and the dangers of abandoning it can be reversed and made into lessons on how best to overthrow it. Hume displays what might be called historical recalcitrance. He thinks modern civilized (by which he means constitutional) government, with its institutionalized legal and, more importantly, political safeguards for personal liberty, a great good in its promotion of peace and prosperity. But throughout his narratives Hume shows an awareness that it is also a great irritant to those who want arenas for showing extraordinary political abilities as well as to those who appreciate those abilities, including Hume himself. Hume could not help a sneaking admiration for politicians whose actions delayed, defied, or subverted the very impersonal and uniform institutions that he himself most prized. In spite of himself, he wrote, if not “advice” to princes, at least sympathetic and systematic praise (interrupted by condemnation).10 All this sometimes obscures the underlying constitutional lesson. I shall close by suggesting some limits to Hume’s reverse-constitutionalist musings, reasons why both he and we can expect that over time striking Machiavellian virtù will lose out to boring constitutional order. Enumerating the lessons of England’s civil wars, Hume wrote that the danger of monarchs’ arrogating more power than was legal must be set against another lesson, “no less useful, concerning the madness of the people, the furies of fanaticism, and the danger of mercenary armies” (H V.545–6). But what constitutionalists call danger, would-be new princes call opportunity. Hume thought Cromwell uncannily and continually good at “discovering the characters, and practicing on the weaknesses of mankind” (H VI.109). One can understand Hume’s Cromwell as someone who understood constitutions’ particular characters and weaknesses as well—but none of their strengths.

MERCENARY ARMIES Long-term processes of social and cultural change (Hume’s own, or that of others) can claim to explain why a king such as Charles I was overthrown. They cannot easily explain why the resulting commonwealth soon yielded to Cromwell and a military Protectorate. Here the answers involve politics, which includes force. The parliament, “not retaining much authority,” more importantly was “destitute of power”: that is, its own army turned against it, as officers and private soldiers alike found they could flout Parliament’s orders, “felt their power, and resolved to be masters” (H V.497). The army involved was “mercenary” in a sense that is not our usual one. Far from being raised among foreigners or those desperate for money, the New Model

248

Andrew Sabl

Army was all British; it was distinguished from earlier ad hoc antiroyalist levies precisely in being authorized and paid centrally, by Parliament; and Hume never questions its patriotic fervor and religion-inspired bravery. Hume here is not adopting Machiavelli’s criticism of mercenary armies but adapting it, with what we might call philosophical virtù, to a new military order. The army he calls mercenary we would now call professional—a word absent in this usage from Hume’s works and indeed from his age.11 A professional army is distinct from the aristocrat-led armies who fought for Charles in the civil wars, but also from what Hume (and Machiavelli) thought appropriate to would-be stable commonwealths, namely militias.12 Hume stresses the advantages of such professional armies in terms that may remind us of Weber’s iron cage. When modern warfare is at issue, an officer’s “personal courage” is hardly relevant (H V.437; also V.469, VI.48), and Cromwell’s army, whatever its leader’s vices and its soldiers’ fanaticism, was simply very efficient at its tasks. It could utilize the skill of talented and “active” but low-born officers, as aristocrat-led armies could not (and thereby attract such to its service); and it could keep effective discipline, as over-refined or else libertine aristocrats would not (H V.429, 437, 470–71; VI.41, 91). But though Hume in such ways updates Machiavelli’s not quite modern “sociology”—updating it in the face of new economic, military, and religious trends as Tocqueville aimed at a “new political science” in the face of democracy—he never falls into historicism in either of its senses: determinism or the surrender of philosophic judgment. Hume, unlike many of his Scottish contemporaries, never divides societies into stages that allegedly occur in temporal and moral sequence, and he always keeps room for political judgments that go against the tide of history, or at least against the dominant trend. In this instance, professional armies’ military efficiency comes at such a cost that it might not be worth paying: they are bodies subject to no external checks and potentially animated by sectarian views quite different from those of any other social body. The self-denying ordinance whereby members of parliament stripped themselves of military commands meant “the separation of the army from Parliament and the total loss of our liberties.”13 The New Model Army successfully resisted the conscription that would have diluted its zeal and its privileges, while defending the right to petition the government as if its soldiers were any private group—interest group, we would now say—of “Englishmen” (H V.495). As the Army gained in power it demonstrated “impunity” in exercising “acts of oppression on the helpless nation.” It imposed astonishing and unprecedented levels of taxation, draconian punishments for not paying, arbitrary authority placed in the hands of Army-appointed county committees and devoted to both public ends and private vendettas; in short, “slavery” and “tyranny” (H V.499–502;

New Models and Orders

249

VI.117).14 Hume, characteristically, prefers either of two more coherent— though opposite—alternatives: royalist armies largely staffed by birth or wealth, not merit (as England retained in Hume’s time and beyond), or else republics relying on militias. Arguments from efficiency imply costs for such anti-meritocratic armies but not necessarily fatal ones. Hume judges that armies’ principal commanders require “great genius” and “long experience” but that their subordinate officers may with little harm be selected by other criteria (H V.429). If the New Model Army is not beyond judgment, neither is it beyond agency, the creation of history. It was in fact the creation of Cromwell, a “deliberate political conspiracy.”15 Cromwell created pressure for the Self-denying Ordinance by arranging for all pulpits to preach on it at once—a manufactured unity presented by his agents as an inspired miracle—and then used complicated maneuvers, involving his own deliberate but temporary absence from command, to make sure that he himself was exempt (H V.447). Finally, the course of history always contains ironies, visible only in hindsight, that frustrate all forms of determinism and all attributions of perfect foresight to statesmen (including Cromwell) (H V.510). One such ironic insight, available to us but not Hume, is that while the immediate effect of separating political from military commands was loss of parliamentary authority and liberty, the long-term effect was to enable modern democratic alternation in office by ensuring that a change in the economic or social coalition governing a State would neither require nor imply a revolution in those commanding the force of arms. Cromwell’s maneuvering for personal and sectarian tyranny ultimately allowed the triumph of “indirect government.”

THE FURIES OF FANATICISM AND THE MADNESS OF THE PEOPLE Machiavelli’s princes are supposed to use religion well. This is often taken to mean that they should not hold religious belief too strongly. Cromwell was somewhat more pious than this counsel would hold to be wise. But the circumstances had changed. For obvious reasons, Machiavelli did not address the problems raised by Reformation and religious pluralism. Reformation and the political practices that were invented in its course gave rise to problems of pluralism and modern populism not known in Machiavelli’s age.16 For one thing, if the prince is supposed to know how to use priests well, it remains to be studied what to do when people disagree, or fight, over who counts as a priest and which set of competing priests, if any, speaks for God. The counsel to seem (and to be) religious but sometimes to act against religion is underspecified when which religion to recognize

250

Andrew Sabl

becomes a question, in some ways the central question, of political prudence.17 In addition, Reformation (as the movement’s name implies) practiced piety in a new mode, not through a traditional and personalized hierarchy but through mass printing and mass preaching. It has been noted how closely modern religious doctrines, whose intellectual trappings Hume labels “false philosophy,” resemble modern mass ideologies sustained more through quasi-intellectualized popular fervor than through the force of the best argument.18 The modern prince must not just act but talk—talk in order to gain the public opinion he needs to act—and talk in a particular key, one suited to mass meetings and governments based on an “opinion” soon to be called “public.”19 Cromwell used modern religion well: he played off religious factions and perfected what Hume called the public “harangue.”20 But in doing so, he illuminated how modern religion limits the prince’s freedom of action—a point often made from the other direction, by constitutionalists praising religious checks on government, but not often from the standpoint of the prince who must manage within those checks. Seeming religious is easier when there is only one religion and disputes only over the proper degree and mode of piety within it. A prince can easily leave it doubtful how religious he is. But under conditions of pluralism, he cannot consistently conceal which religion he or she belongs to. You have to declare yourself, and your declaration is supposed to be somewhat durable. No one minds a religious or ideological conversion in the direction of one’s own creed—once.21 As a result, there are now limits on who can become a new prince that did not exist in an age before modern religious creeds and modern parties. Cromwell could seize control of an army of fanatics (Hume’s usual and impartial word) only because everyone knew that he was one himself. Cromwell knew this to be a crucial advantage and used it—one paradoxical way, among others discussed below, in which the very sincerity of his piety let him be the one who could manipulate faith (H V.214, VI.109 and see below). Once ensconced in power, Cromwell could then use religion in a more classic princely mode, leaving the degree of his zeal unclear and seeming more religious to some than others. The “extraordinary” Cromwell could “[o]vercome first all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice . . . [s]erve all parties patiently for a while, and command them victoriously at last” (H VI.107–8).22 Cromwell’s religious policy, combining actual enthusiastic belief with politic variations in the degree and mode of enthusiasm, merged seamlessly into his policy toward public meetings, which combined a sincere love of mass preaching with a politic program of manipulating and transforming such meetings so as to fuse religion with his own political-military ends and practices. To speak of the “madness of the people,” as Hume does, may seem unkind. And it is unkind, but not toward ordinary human judgment,

New Models and Orders

251

in which Hume had perhaps more confidence than any other Enlightenment philosopher save Rousseau. Instead, it is unkind toward the specific mechanisms by which commonsensical individuals sometimes combined to form a whole—the people—much less rational than its parts. Publius writes of the “confusion and intemperance” of all “numerous assemblies,” but does not say why “had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”23 Hume, a student of moral psychology first and politics second, provides the psychic logic: in multitudes, contagion reigns unchecked. Just as party feeling undercuts ordinary reputation-based checks on conduct by creating incentives for large groups to praise bad deeds done for factional benefit,24 large assemblies take a similar problem further. “By their very number, they are, in a great measure, exempt from the restraint of shame, so when they also overleap the bounds of law, naturally break out into acts of the greatest tyranny and injustice” (H V.457). There is no space here for a full treatment of what Hume in the History called “contagion”—a process of spontaneous transmission of sentiments from person to person that plays a rather dark role in Hume’s political theory, though the very similar “sympathy” played a more neutral role in his moral analysis.25 Constitutionalists regularly though implicitly guard against such contagion, as in Madison’s argument for limiting the size of the House of Representatives, or Hume’s own, perhaps jocular, proposal for a “Perfect Commonwealth” of very small local meetings specifically prevented from communicating with one another and deliberating simultaneously on the same issues.26 But again, Cromwell’s career can be taken as an object lesson in reverse constitutionalism, in how to create confusion and intemperance and turn them to one’s own advantage. Some of the possible strategies (as well as circumstances) of contagious politics had occurred spontaneously and during the last Puritan parliament before Cromwell gained power. First, long before the revolution in which Paris and its crowds proverbially ruled France, London had come to rule England: The capital especially, being the seat of parliament, was highly animated with the spirit of mutiny and dissaffection. Tumults were daily raised; seditious assemblies encouraged; and every man, neglecting his own business, was wholly intent on the defence of liberty and religion. By stronger contagion, the popular affections were communicated from breast to breast, in this place of general rendezvous and society. (H V.294, emphasis added)

Second, the scope of political argument had been broadened from oratory among an elite audience with an opportunity for reply to mass propaganda. Parliament’s speeches were first made public at Puritan instigation at this time. Third, the idea of fusing political with pulpit rhetoric had already

252

Andrew Sabl

occurred—to the preachers, who had long been tamped down by Archbishop Laud, an Anglican extremist, and now took revenge with antiroyalist and antiprelacy speeches of “faction and fanaticism” (H V.294). Under these conditions, oratory, the classical art of speaking, could not with its elite audience stand against an unleashed public opinion: “Noise and fury, cant and hypocrisy, formed the sole rhetoric, which, during this tumult of various prejudices and passions, could be heard or attended to” (H V.294–5). So far this was chance and the “genius” of a newly awakened Puritan age. As with the Puritan parliamentarians generally, Hume is of two minds: the loss of order and decorum involved must be balanced against a clear gain in the spirit of “civil liberty.” Nor of course did Cromwell himself originate the new politics of mass preaching and mass meetings that Protestantism had popularized and that Archbishop Laud’s end had allowed to enter England for the first time. But this lack of control and spirit of popular liberty were precisely barriers to Cromwell’s purposes, which he set about tearing down. Himself very bad at parliamentary oratory and private conversation (H VI. 56–57, 96–97, 109), Cromwell was spurred to appreciate the potential of an organized mass politics; he systematically organized and coordinated a system of political contagion toward ends very different from those of both spontaneous populism and deliberate constitutionalism.27 That is, upon taking charge of the New Model Army, Cromwell used the budding practices of mass politics to invent what would later be called totalitarianism. In place of a general and diffuse religious spirit among an army divided by sect and class, Cromwell created what would later be called an ideology, evangelical inspiration; a mass party, the armed and chosen “Saints”; and a charismatic leader, Cromwell himself. Distrustful of preachers whose sermons could not be controlled, Cromwell invented the officer as ideological commissar: To the greater number of the regiments, chaplains were not appointed: The officers assumed the spiritual duty, and united it with their military functions. During the intervals of action, they occupied themselves in sermons, prayers, exhortations; and the same emulation, there, attended them, which, in the field, is so necessary to support the honour of that profession. Rapturous ecstasies supplied the place of study and reflection; and while the zealous devotees poured out their thoughts in unpremeditated harangues, they mistook that eloquence, which, to their own surprize, as well as that of others, flowed in upon them, for divine illuminations, and for illapses of the Holy Spirit. Wherever they were quartered, they excluded the minister from his pulpit; and, usurping his place, conveyed their sentiments to the audience, with all the authority, which followed their power, their valour, and their military exploits, united to their appearing zeal and fervor. The private soldiers, seized with the same spirit, employed their vacant hours in prayer, in perusing the Holy Scrip-

New Models and Orders

253

tures, in ghostly conferences; where they compared the progress of their souls in grace, and mutually stimulated each other to farther advances in the great work of their salvation. (V.469)

That the soldiers “mutually stimulated” one another’s piety is no accident. The New Model Army was an exercise in spreading and intensifying political contagion just as deliberately as constitutionalists hoped to quarantine it. Here as elsewhere, Hume notes changes in political circumstances but refuses to take them as either inevitable or independent of human agency. Social practices were usually founded by one person, or a small number, who found them advantageous or else pleasing in themselves. Before Laud’s “fatal” repression and Cromwell’s deliberate fanning of the flames (H V.223), the Puritan movement had consisted of Reform-minded preachers within the Church of England, who sought a regular salary and the endorsement of Established status. We today might note in hindsight that where political authorities granted such benefits, either as Established or tolerated churches, to preachers of very similar theological tendencies to the Puritans, enthusiastic preaching became a minor and politically unimportant tendency—unlike in Britain and above all America (which has preserved many customs now mocked as relics in Britain). If Hume, echoing Machiavelli, said that “camps are the true mothers of cities,” a settled and legal government being a requirement of war rather than peace,28 here the cause is reversed. The desire for unified, proto-totalitarian political indoctrination of mass armies was the father of the apparently spontaneous camp meeting. No Cromwell, no Falwell.

HYPOCRISY: THE VIRTUE OF MODERN TYRANNIES Hume, throughout his History, stresses the complicated, variable, almost contradictory aspects of Cromwell’s character. The word “hypocrisy” appears with great frequency but with unclear meaning, not only when Cromwell is being deceptive but when he seems to be honestly pious. It seems to be bound up in very complex ways with Cromwell’s capacity for initiative and ability (e.g. H VI.11–12, 15, 28–29). While being protean and hard to gauge was very useful to Cromwell (H VI.499), artifice of character—the ability to turn lion and fox—is not Hume’s explanation of the contradictory qualities that Cromwell displayed. For one thing Hume, perhaps surprisingly, portrays Cromwell as less in command of himself and less supremely politic than might first appear (see H V.445, VI.54, 80, 102, 109)—though Hume is certainly inconsistent, sometimes portraying Cromwell as very controlled and politic indeed (H V.447–49, 473, 505).29

254

Andrew Sabl

It is safest to say that Hume gives varying assessments on the matter, and at one point attributes this to Cromwell’s himself being extremely “unequal and irregular” in the exercise of all his—considerable—qualities except his “magnanimous resolution” and his skill at using human weaknesses (H VI.109; compare VI.12, 74). Hume’s final assessment of Cromwell’s character seems to say that “extravagant panegyric” and “virulent invective” are both appropriate (H VI.107). All this seems to point to a complex and contradictory character, not so much a hypocritical one. Yet Hume is phenomenally consistent in applying the “hypocrite” label. Indeed, he paints Cromwell as being so hypocritical that there was no sincerity underneath: “though one vizor fell off, another still remained” (V.499).30 If Cromwell seems to have been honestly erratic, why see him as a hypocrite all the way down? Hume’s interpreters have offered multiple explanations, as did Hume himself; many of them involve versions of the idea that people who excel at fooling others soon fool themselves.31 But few have asked whether political circumstances provide a deeper explanation or foundation for a politics of hypocrisy, one in which everyone appears calculating because acting on any authentic character is fatal. Ever since Plato, the popular tyrant has been associated with hypocrisy: the tyrant comes to power promising favors to the people while planning total power for himself.32 While democrats who aim at equality and freedom can say so openly, the tyrant who will eventually rule through (and perhaps in) fear cannot campaign on a platform of fear. In the changed modern circumstances Hume is discussing, hypocrisy is still a virtue for usurpers but must take much stranger shapes. Needing support in an age of zeal, the would-be usurper must show ideological or religious convictions for a long time before grasping at power—and the best way to arrive at the crisis with this reputation intact is surely to have those convictions—yet is unlikely to be devoted first and foremost to the religion or ideology, rather than ambition, or he would more likely become a priest or propagandist for life than seek power. Needing not just ready-made allies but organized armies, he must rise through the ranks of an army pledged to one form of government and then turn its loyalties toward another, or none. Finally, though modes of contagion might suggest that the people involved would double and redouble their confidence in one another’s virtue, the modern usurper must turn their confidence in one another into confidence in one leader. These political and social complexities help explain Cromwell’s paradoxes without reducing their complexity. While Cromwell’s actions were calculated and intentional, the occasion for even reaching the point of decision would never have occurred had his character not been variable and perhaps opaque even to himself. When urged by Parliament after Charles’s execution to take the crown for the public good (not here in conflict with

New Models and Orders

255

his own), Cromwell lapsed into “unintelligibility,” notes Jennifer Herdt, since he knew the arguments for doing so were very strong but that contradicted all the anti-monarchical propaganda he had used to whip up the army.33 His hypocrisy resulted from a futile attempt to mix reason with modern party propaganda; the result was to limit his freedom of action and occasion for virtù. Hume does not think Cromwell himself had any sincere anti-monarchical opinions (as opposed to sincerely enthusiastic ones in religion), and portrays him as having been willing to accept, had circumstances been favorable, an offer of an earldom and army command under Charles I (V.506). But a private bargain with the king would have been “a flat contradiction to all former professions and tenets,” hence untenable if Cromwell wanted to keep partisan support (V.510).34 As for honest zeal, Hume repeatedly stresses how Cromwell’s own real fanaticism, acquired from long habit, was invaluable in winning over a fanatical army (VI.109). Although Cromwell was “transported to a degree of madness with religious ecstasies, he never forgot the political purposes to which they might serve” (H VI.5—the same passage in which Hume calls Cromwell “suited to the age in which he lived, and to that alone”). Hume considers this a sort of hypocrisy because religion is supposed to serve moral ends, including the virtue of allegiance to non-tyrannical rulers, but Cromwell’s flexible—or nonexistent—political principles (on which more later) let him divide the two questions. Service to God was a principle, but who governed on earth was arbitrary; so it might as well be Cromwell himself. In fact, the antinomian character Hume sees in early English enthusiasm was invaluable not only for anarchists but for tyrants (H VI.3–4): the regicide, Cromwell is able to tell the Commons, would have been treason if “voluntarily proposed” but when “providence and necessity” demanded was only to be regretted, prayed over, and then executed. The “pretences of sanctity” masked (and, in Hume’s view, magnified) the “enormity of the violences and usurpations” that Cromwell put into practice (H V.533). As for contagious zeal, Cromwell controlled it by embodying it: Cromwel, who knew the rigid inflexibility of Fairfax, in every thing, which he regarded as matter of principle, ventured to solicit him with the utmost earnestness; and he went so far as to shed tears of grief and vexation on the occasion. No one could suspect any ambition in the man, who laboured so zealously to retain his general in that high office, which, he knew, he himself was alone entitled to fill. The same warmth of temper, which made Cromwel a frantic enthusiast, rendered him the most dangerous of hypocrites; and it was to this turn of mind, as much as to his courage and capacity, that he owed all his wonderful successes. By the contagious ferment of his zeal, he engaged every one to co-operate with him in his measures; and entering easily and affectionately into every part, which he was disposed to act, he was enabled, even after multiplied deceits, to cover, under a tempest of passion, all his crooked schemes and profound artifices.

256

Andrew Sabl

Fairfax having resigned his commission, it was bestowed on Cromwel, who was declared captain-general of all the forces in England. This command, in a commonwealth, which stood entirely by arms, was of the utmost importance; and was the chief step, which this ambitious politician had yet made toward sovereign power. (H VI.28–29, emphasis added)

Cromwell was only able to depose Fairfax, with the latter’s consent, because Cromwell seemed so loyal and attached to principle. He seemed so because he honestly was so, not just coolly but passionately and infectiously—until it was time to put such inconvenient qualities aside. His friends and enemies alike made the mistake of confusing strong feelings for steady ones, when only the former were either natural to Cromwell or useful. And while someone aiming at virtue might try to make his character more predictable, Cromwell—aiming at power in a situation where the only way to get it was to betray serially people who would have been good judges of character had Cromwell had such a thing—was content to leave his disordered passions as they were. Modernity imposes on its new princes what might be called ethical tyranny, that is, not tyranny constrained by ethics but tyrannical limits on the ethics the prince may practice. The ancient tyrant lives in fear, unable to move and live freely; the modern one lives in hypocrisy, unable to think freely. He must conceal anything that contradicts his own partisan and military propaganda, including any good qualities he may have. One way Cromwell solved the problem of army loyalty was by transforming the nature of authority from monarchical to religious/partisan grounds. To the extent that the soldiers defined themselves as Saints, they did not owe the allegiance of loyal Britons. As a result, however, to the extent that Cromwell was himself a patriot of more orthodox stripe, he dared not show it. As seen above, he had it in his power to become a tyrannical Lord Protector but dared not aspire to be a virtuous earl. A similar explanation attends Hume’s observation that Cromwell was “a friend to justice, though his public conduct was one continued violation of it,” and that he practiced as much “justice” and “clemency” as an authority “founded only on the sword” allowed (H VI.5, 85). Remember that justice for Hume is an “artificial” virtue. It consists in observing a formal and unnatural impartiality, embodied in law, when our natural inclination is to favor ourselves and those close to us. But the Protectorate of the Saints required formal injustice: regarding one’s political and religious confederates as due more rights and more political power than all others, and disdaining human law as beneath inspiration in dignity (H VI.3–4, V.514). Absent law and government, Hume warns, the only means of achieving security is to increase the power of one’s own faction, which only increases the danger to other factions and intensifies the process (H V.455; compare V.440).

New Models and Orders

257

The principle of civil war, to adapt Montesquieu’s scheme, is extreme partiality—which in Hume’s terms means extreme injustice. In these circumstances, Cromwell’s relative justice and mercy were in contradiction to regime principles: politically, vices. He indulged closet Anglicans more than he was supposed to and punished ex-royalists less harshly than he promised. He was head of a regime in which people could not be proud of what were normally political virtues—and then was humbled by it. Machiavelli’s prince must dare to be bad; Hume’s is not just afraid but ashamed to be good. Hume’s portrayal of Cromwell’s last days sounds like a classic, perhaps moralized, version of the “fate of tyrants” genre. Indeed, Cromwell dares not go anywhere by a straight route or without armor and guards. But the specific reasons why this happened in Cromwell’s case are worth dwelling on: the grandeur, which he had attained with so much guilt and courage, could not ensure him that tranquillity, which it belongs to virtue alone, and moderation fully to ascertain. Overwhelmed with the load of public affairs, dreading perpetually some fatal accident in his distempered government, seeing nothing around him but treacherous friends or enraged enemies, possessing the confidence of no party, resting his title on no principle, civil or religious, he found his power to depend on so delicate a poize of factions and interests, as the smallest event was able, without any preparation, in a moment to overturn. Death too, which, with such signal intrepidity, he had braved in the field, being incessantly threatened by the poniards of fanatical or interested assassins, was ever present to his terrified apprehension, and haunted him in every scene of business or repose. (H VI.105)

Cromwell is done in not by his own vices but by those of conflicting partisans—“fanatical” or “interested,” enraged by Cromwell’s policies of toleration and mercy, not, as in Machiavelli, by slights to merely personal honor or property. Cromwell finds becoming moderate and semi-virtuous, the classic refuge of worried tyrants, no longer a road to peace: on the contrary, the more moderate and tolerant he is, the more his life is endangered. This is a modern fate.

WEAK CONSTITUTIONS There would have been a way out: a constitutional settlement. Here Hume abandons reverse constitutionalism for the normal variety, though with irony. Precisely the active and impatient character that made Cromwell so successful—counseled to think carefully before dismissing Parliament and taking power himself, he agrees and deliberates for fifteen minutes (H

258

Andrew Sabl

VI.53)—made him profoundly unsuited for thinking through constitutions. The man of action was lost without political theory. Cromwell as Lord Protector was presented with various programs for constitutional settlement. He adopted some but took none seriously. The Instrument of Government, “by which the whole government of three kingdoms was pretended to be regulated and adjusted to all succeeding generations,” was written in four days (H VI.64). Hume thinks this showed: its parliamentary institutions were left impotent even though Cromwell apparently meant their existence as real concessions to republicanism, and all real power remained in Cromwell and his council. Cromwell attempted to remedy this by allowing the election of a new parliament, whose mode of election Cromwell rigged unartfully, and which surprised Cromwell by opposing him until he dissolved it (VI.70–71). The Instrument was later changed for another constitution, but this was also poorly drafted and adopted so casually that both constitutions, and the whole idea of a supposed consent to them, lost credibility (H VI.98). Part of the problem was temperament. When invited by a counselor to converse on constitutional matters, Cromwell was so bored that he started a pillow fight (H VI.90). Another part of the problem was intellect. Cromwell was as bad at writing as he was courageous at acting, and this for “want of ideas,” not style (H VI.96; compare VI. 31, 61, 71–72). And part of the problem was a conceptual error: Cromwell was good at honoring public service, thus showing in Hume’s view an understanding of public spirit and the “shadow of a commonwealth” (VI.43), but he erred in thinking that public spirit was a substitute for government. The larger problem, however, was that Cromwell lacked coherent constitutional options. The very nature of Cromwell’s claim to rule, and the military basis on which it continued to rest, made the constitutional elements of consent and mutual checks elusive. All “undeterminate power,” as that of a Protector, is necessarily arbitrary; all “purely military government lacks a regular form, fluctuating between monarchy and an officer aristocracy” (H VI.95, 93). Parliamentary “liberty”—the free choice of representatives with real power—repeatedly proved “incompatible . . . with military usurpations.”35 If “the domestic administration of Cromwel . . . was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbitrary power,” Hume admits that “[p]erhaps, his difficult situation admitted of neither” (VI.109). Once again, the tyrant was trapped. The modern constitutional customs that would have ensured the stability of executive power were incompatible with Cromwell’s desire for a guarantee that he would exercise that power. And once again, the trap was moral as well as prudential. Cromwell’s ends being unattainable and in fact incoherent, his means were rendered less excusable. To be clear: constitutional government was not inevitable, and Hume can imagine, had Cromwell lived longer or had he had a more politically

New Models and Orders

259

vigorous son, a durable absolutist settlement. Had Cromwell been a principled absolutist, he might have founded a new empire. The constitutional imperative is hypothetical in the sense that if Cromwell wanted government by consent and without the need for continual force and vigilance, he could only get it on terms that undercut his own position.36

MODERN FORTUNE AND UNMANLY PEACE Belief in fortune has been called unmodern: . . . Machiavelli’s subscription to a premodern cosmology and medicine disqualifies him from being considered the founder of modern political philosophy—a title, to his great credit, he had never claimed. One cannot be modern and at the same time explain fortuna the way he did. A negative proof of this is that no modern political philosopher has ever paid any serious attention to fortuna. The new cosmology made that unthinkable.37

Many things might be said about this passage, but one is obvious: if fortuna has been done in by cosmology, why is it political philosophers who are said to (rightly) deny it attention? But if this is a slip, it is a wise one. The enemy of fortuna is not modern natural science—which could not care less about questions of political creation and adaptation—but modern constitutionalism. Of course many modern students of politics take fortuna seriously, but they can only do so by opposing constitutionalism outright; by writing about situations of regime change and radical constitutional uncertainty; or by proposing a scheme, rhetorically appealing but in practice opaque, whereby today’s political actors are to preserve their sense of spontaneity and virtù by asserting that their radically new actions all involve refoundings of old orders, or perhaps vice versa.38 There is a real and constant tension between modern constitutionalism and attempted political greatness. It has been said that Machiavelli wrote for “potential princes,” perhaps even would-be tyrants.39 Hume, choosing more solid and no doubt lower ground, wrote for ordinary readers, whether learned or conversable.40 This makes his political essays, written for and about English contemporaries, seem complacent and boring in comparison to the History, where there is more blood. Stable constitutionalism is so much more boring than revolutions and dynastic wars that political theory in favor of constitutionalism becomes an exercise in forcing the audience’s appreciation of what they have, not getting them excited about what they might gain. To the extent that a would-be Cromwell seeking glory did read the History for lessons, he would learn that modern political life in stable constitutional regimes presented less scope for extraordinary, order-changing virtù than ordinary people fear and restive intellectuals hope. Governments

260

Andrew Sabl

that proceed by evolution, lacking sharp breaks of legitimacy; legal systems that guarantee a high degree of security while slowly amending the rules of property to meet new conditions; educational and cultural orders that predictably teach citizens the artificial virtues of justice and allegiance: all these reduce the role of tempestuous chance in political affairs. Fortune has matured, and now favors those who are not just manly, like Cromwell, but both manly and charming, like the (late, irrevocably constitutionalist) Charles I.41 Hume’s History is largely, though far from completely, an exercise in debunking prevalent myths. If we seek the roots of English liberty, we will find them, Hume says, in modern innovations, not ancient feudalism. The case of Cromwell points out some of the unromantic consequences, namely that settled liberty’s gain is virtù loss. Our peace and prosperity depend on the fact that fortuna, like nostalgia, is not what it used to be.

NOTES I would like to thank Sherol Manavi for research assistance. 1. In the History of England, Hume always spells the name with one final “l,” not two. The choice seems deliberate, as the spelling “Cromwell” was common in Hume’s time and he himself used it in the earlier Treatise in making a point about new and old princes: “time and custom give authority to all forms of government, and all successions of princes; and that power, which at first was founded only on injustice and violence, becomes in time legal and obligatory. . . . The present king of France makes Hugh Capet a more lawful prince than Cromwell. . .” (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 3.2.10, page 362; italics in original). We may note that the simple English gematria of “Cromwel” is 89, also the number attaching to “fallen angel,” “deceptive,” “religion,” and “parasite,” whereas “Cromwell” shares the gematria 101 with “legitimate.” But did Hume know of this? I do not know. 2. Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989), 8. Likewise, Hume’s hopes for a political science with some fairly reliable rules track the existence of stable institutions: “All absolute governments must very much depend on the administration; and this is one of the great inconveniences attending that form of government” compared to one with “particular checks and controuls, provided by the constitution.” David Hume, “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, rev. ed., ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 15. 3. See Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 65; David Armitage, “John Milton: Poet against Empire” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 206–25 and esp. 213–14. Armitage seems to sympathize with Machiavelli’s well-known doctrine that in a competitive

New Models and Orders

261

geopolitical world, republican liberty and expansionary foreign policy cannot be so neatly sundered (208–9). 4. Laurence L. Bongie, David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution, 2nd ed., with a foreword by Donald W. Livingston (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), passim. 5. David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols., with a foreword by William B. Todd (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983). Parenthetical references to this work in the text will use the letter “H” followed by the volume and page number of this edition. 6. Frederick Whelan has noted the unexpected affinity between Hume’s “realism” in political matters and Machiavelli’s, and in particular the ways in which Hume’s portrayal of Cromwell resembles Machiavelli’s treatment of new princes. The circumstances under which Cromwell gained power resemble some of Machiavelli’s cases—military careers leading to political power; the use of “contrived emergencies”; the exploitation of splits in a winning party by someone keen to gain final power for himself. Some of Cromwell’s virtues were likewise Machiavellian. Cromwell was artful, astonishingly flexible, and a master of dissimulation—to a fault, since by the end of his life he had trouble making people believe him (Whelan cites here H VI.103). He also had a genuine talent for good government and toleration, which we shall discuss below. Frederick G. Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), 275–77. While taking exception to some points in this work, and expanding on its treatment of Cromwell (only a few pages long), I would stress Whelan’s keen and substantial contribution to our understanding of Hume’s realist and post-Machiavellian tendencies. 7. Donald T. Siebert (The Moral Animus of David Hume [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990], 87) writes that Hume’s Puritan politicians in general threaten to become “freaks of human history” due to the distortions in their characters wrought by religion. Donald W. Livingston’s reading of Cromwell’s role (Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998], 285) is similar. 8. David Hume, “Of Civil Liberty,” Essays, 88. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, in On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith Masters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), book III, chapter vi, 88. 10. Perhaps Hume’s least ambiguous political hero is Montrose, whom Hume admires both for his naturally “great soul,” “vast and unbounded” and for the “heroic effort of duty” by which he subordinated his princely genius in favor of “unlimited submission to the will of his sovereign” (H VI.24–25; emphasis in original). I thank Adam Potkay for pointing out this portrait’s significance. 11. See the searchable CD-ROM: David Hume, Complete Works and Correspondence, Past Masters series (Charlottesville: InteLex Corporation, 1997). The Oxford English Dictionary lists the relevant sense of “professional” (4a) as dating only to 1798. The noun “profession” does appear in the History (specifically applied to the military at V.429) and often with an ethically positive connotation, especially regarding lawyers and doctors. 12. David Hume, “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” Essays, 512–29. I here stay agnostic as to whether Hume meant this essay seriously or, as some think, as a

262

Andrew Sabl

reductio meant to show stable commonwealths in large countries such as England to be impossible. For the relationship of Hume’s militia argument to “republican” thought generally, see John Robertson, “The Scottish Enlightenment at the Limits of the Civic Tradition,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 137–78. 13. Letter from Hume to Montesquieu, 10 April 1749, in Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press), I.134. My translation. Hume calls the parliamentary independents’ deluded plan to retain control of the New Model Army and use it to build an “imaginary republic” the least commonsensical and most impolitic act of the whole Civil War. Only the blindness induced by ambition can explain it, he thinks (H V.509). 14. The army’s irresistibility lessens, in Hume’s view, Cromwell’s claim to political genius. In several instances where the Parliament or King seem to have been fooled by Cromwell, it was in fact overawed, temporizing in full or partial knowledge of Cromwell’s true intentions but unable to resist them (H VI.109). That said, Hume still seems to think Cromwell a political genius, meaning “a man of extraordinary capacity” on the order of Richelieu (“Queries and answers relating to Sir Robert Walpole’s character,” Scots Magazine 4 ([March 1742]: 119; compare History VI.57, 72, 109). Hume apparently judges that Cromwell displayed his genius in gaining command of the Army. Turning that command into political rule was less extraordinary. 15. Whelan, Hume, 276. 16. Another post-Reformation innovation that complicates Machiavelli’s advice was sectarian martyrdom, which makes it harder to use ferocious spectacles—like Borgia’s against Remirro—to cow people into submission. Political terror loses its point if people seek out martyrdom and political movements are strengthened rather than weakened by tales of barbaric executions. Hume believes this makes religious persecution, in particular, no longer practical. See H III.432, 441 and VI.322–24; and Andrew Sabl, “Toleration as Policy: A Humean Defense,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 30–September 3, 2006. Of course, there are many ways in which determined tyrants can solve this problem, if such it be. The modern science of terror makes constant improvements through repeated experiments. 17. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), chapter 18, page 70. 18. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy, esp. chapters 10 and 11. 19. Hume of course speaks of governments resting on opinion but not quite that of the “public” (“Of the First Principles of Government [1741],” Essays, 32). The phrase “public opinion” in its political sense was probably invented by Rousseau in his Letter to d’Alembert. 20. Hume’s sarcastic treatment of “harangues,” and even some of his specific claims about how they spread and were used during England’s Civil War, parallel Hobbes’s in Behemoth (Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth; or, the Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies, with an introduction by Stephen Holmes [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990], esp. pp. 23–24). But because Hume regarded opinion rather than demonstrative science as the true basis of political allegiance, he

New Models and Orders

263

did not follow Hobbes (Behemoth, 159) in attacking rhetoric and public speaking more generally. 21. Hume endorses Henry IV’s politic “Paris is worth a Mass” (without citing the words, H IV.290–91). But if the sectarian tide had turned and the Huguenots had begun to be predominant, it would not have been so easy for the king to declare, on second thought, that it was once again worth a Calvinist pew. 22. One thing that made this easier was a moderate persecution. Although Hume, who thinks all forms of Christianity equally absurd though differentially dangerous, gives Cromwell credit for “toleration,” this toleration extended only to different sects of reform Protestants, with all of whom Cromwell could coexist, but excluded “Catholics and prelatists [Anglicans]” (H VI.88), that is, those whose religious beliefs made them political threats. 23. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Signet Classics, 1999), no. 55. The maxim may be borrowed from Cardinal de Retz’ Mémoires: see note 26 below. 24. Hume, “Of the Independency of Parliament,” Essays, 43. 25. For a rare recognition of the link between sympathy and contagion, see Jennifer Herdt, Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 204f, although Herdt seems to me to slight politics, both the circumstances that make hypocrisy inevitable and the methods that reveal or embody it. The metaphor of emotional “contagion” is hardly new with Hume. Herdt cites Shaftesbury as a possible source; Peter Jones cites Malebranche in Hume’s Sentiments: Their Ciceronian and French Context (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982), 27. 26. Hume, “Idea for a Perfect Commonwealth,” Essays. See especially 523: “Cardinal de RETZ says, that all numerous assemblies, however composed, are mere mob, and swayed in their debates by the least motive. This we find confirmed by daily experience. When an absurdity strikes a member, he conveys it to his neighbour, and so on, till the whole be infected. Separate this great body; and though every member be only of middling sense, it is not probable, that any thing but reason can prevail over the whole. Influence and example being removed, good sense will always get the better of bad among a number of people.” The editor traces the quotation to de Retz’ Memoires (1717, English translation 1723), in Oeuvres, nouvelle éd. (Paris: Hachette, 1870–1896), 2:422. 27. Livingston’s otherwise fine treatment of mass fanaticism in Hume (Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, 236–38, 254) slights, I think, the distinction between the “kind of republic” originally present in the “armed legislators” of the army and Cromwell’s mature, partisan New Model Army, organized emphatically from the top down (H V.513). 28. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.8, page 346. The editors note the resemblance to Machiavelli’s Discourses, 1.1. 29. In some among the first set of passages Hume says that Cromwell benefited disproportionately from good luck in the sense that becoming a dictator was not too difficult since Cromwell was in command of the army when other authorities had been swept away. Hume seems here to neglect his own account of how Cromwell himself had done the sweeping, had conspired to seize the army and murder the king. If he had good fortune, he made it himself.

264

Andrew Sabl

30. Cromwell’s “genuine character,” Hume seems to assert in an unguarded moment, was “furious” (H VI.53). But that hardly clarifies things. While anger or hatred can be a stable or characteristic quality, fury seems by its nature to be something momentary. 31. Hume appears to say that the Puritans were hypocrites but did not know it, with the Humean processes of association and conjunction operating to blur the difference: “So congenial to the human mind are religious sentiments, that it is impossible to counterfeit long these holy fervours, without feeling some share of the assumed warmth. And, on the other hand, so precarious and temporary, from the frailty of human nature, is the operation of these spiritual views, that the religious ecstasies, if constantly employed, must often be counterfeit, and must be warped by those more familiar motives of interest and ambition, which insensibly gain upon the mind. This indeed seems the key to most of the celebrated characters of that age. Equally full of fraud and of ardour, these pious patriots talked perpetually of seeking the Lord, yet still pursued their own purposes. . . .” (H V.572, note AA; compare VI.110, where Hume partially excuses Cromwell’s regicide on the grounds that “it was to him covered under a mighty cloud of republican and fanatical illusions; and it is not impossible, but he might believe it, as many others did, the most meritorious action, that he could perform”). But Hume does not follow this logic consistently—see, for example, H V.502—and the topic remains fascinating and puzzling. Worth singling out are Herdt’s work on what she calls Hume’s doctrine of “sincere hypocrisy”: Religion and Faction, 197f, and Leo Braudy’s extended case that Hume himself is more or less inconsistent and confused about whether to paint “character” as an independent cause or as the sum of isolated responses to circumstance. Braudy, The Plot of Time: Narrative Form in Hume, Fielding, and Gibbon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970; reprint, Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2003), 61–67. 32. Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 566e–569c. 33. Herdt, Religion and Faction, 211, glossing H VI. 95. Lambert, a would-be successor to Cromwell, had agitated successfully among the army in opposition to Cromwell’s becoming king (H VI.94). 34. As Hume notes, Cromwell toward the end of his life could not count even on his family as allies, since the religious ideology that he himself had promoted made them angry that Cromwell’s policy had stopped short of pious intolerance and moral censorship. Machiavelli’s tenet, that the prince on taking power must disappoint the supporters who brought him to power and expected full satisfaction of their desires, thus takes partisan form (Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter III, page 8). It is even harder to satisfy ideological allies than those who merely sought office and political power for themselves. The latter desire might be gratified without causing a civil war; the former cannot. Compare similarly Hume’s “Of Parties in General,” Essays, 54–63. 35. Another parliament, elected with some freedom, soon had the audacity to oppose Cromwell and oppose the existence of a second legislative body created solely by his fiat (Cromwell dissolved it) (H VI.100). 36. On the ephemeral quality of tyrannies, and in particular with respect to the doctrine that regimes of fear cannot tolerate free elections, Hume may be following Cicero, Offices (On Duties, trans. and ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins [Cambridge:

New Models and Orders

265

Cambridge University Press, 1991]), II.24–26, pp. 71–74—in contrast to Machiavelli, who thought that tyrants could found durable orders and who mocked Cicero’s work at every opportunity. 37. Anthony Parel, review of Feminist Interpretations of Niccolò Machiavelli, ed. Maria Falco, Perspectives on Politics 3 (3) (September 2005): 616. 38. See, respectively, Sheldon Wolin, “Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy,” in Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy, ed. J. Peter Euben, John R. Wallach, and Josiah Ober (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 29–58; Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 5 and passim; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 39. Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 28, 23. 40. David Hume, “Of Essay-Writing,” Essays, 533–57. 41. Hume in H VI.110 calls Cromwell “of a robust frame of body, and of a manly, though not of an agreeable aspect” (compare H VI.56–57, and 149, where Hume calls Cromwell “a barbarian”). Charles, however, “was of a comely presence; of a sweet, but melancholy aspect. His face was regular, handsome, and well complexioned; his body strong, healthy, and justly proportioned. . . . He excelled in horsemanship and other exercises; and he possessed all the exterior, as well as many of the essential qualities, which form an accomplished prince” (HV.544).

III MODERN POLITICS AND THE PRACTICES OF FREEDOM

13 The Source of Hamlet Mary Ann McGrail

It has long been acknowledged by critics and readers of Hamlet that the primary source for the play is the story of a Danish prince, extant in England in Shakespeare’s time in a version by Saxo Grammaticus or Belleforest, with current critical preference for Belleforest.1 I wish to suggest that there is an important source for the play which, while well known to Elizabethan and Stuart audiences, has not subsequently been recognized. Paralleling the Danish story with points of contact between the two plots, it appears to provide the infrastructure and much imagery and detail for the play. This is the “History of Doctor Martin Luther,” twenty-three pages in the fifth edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. An account of the birth of the Reformation, it is one of the most dramatic in all of Foxe’s martyrology. From a twentyfirst century perspective, to understand Shakespeare’s use of this material, the Foxe should be used as a transparency which, when laid over the play, gives new depth and shape to it. Foxe’s political history was to be found in nearly every church in England. A convocation meeting at Canterbury on 3 April 1571 resolved that the 1570 edition of “Monumenta Martyrum” (as it was named) be placed in cathedral churches and in the houses of archbishops, bishops, deacons, and archdeacons; and many parish churches followed suit.2 It was a book that greatly influenced the new Elizabethan Protestant’s understanding of himself in history and theology, and as such it provides the contemporary reader, player, or audience member with the historical and textual closeness necessary to a full understanding of Hamlet. Foxe is especially careful, in a book dedicated to the reigning sovereign, Elizabeth I, protective of the privileges and dignity of the throne, to explain that Luther was not a radical or a revolutionary, but a reformer. He insists 269

270

Mary Ann McGrail

that Luther never desired or anticipated any changes to the existing order, but that he had been chosen as God’s “minister” for the “scouring” of the Church, words echoed in Hamlet’s characterization of himself as “scourge and minister” (III.iv.177). This source, I would argue, helps resolve textual cruxes and explain Hamlet’s mad riddles; it brings unrecognized puns into relief and is complemented by external evidence from Quarto 2, printed according to the “true and perfect Coppie” of the play.3 Most importantly, it offers insight into Shakespeare’s artistic method and political intent. It appears that Shakespeare recognized in Foxe’s account of Luther’s thirtyyear career as a teacher and writer a tale of revenge.4 He fits into the popular story of a Danish prince who feigns madness to preserve his life in a corrupt court, revenge his father, and regain his throne, the story of Martin Luther, who was a devout Augustinian monk turned heretic, and who, in constant danger to himself, revenged the church fathers in opposing the corruption of his own court, the Catholic Church. In what was called at the time a kind of madness, Luther broke the economic and political stranglehold of the Church on Europe. Like the thirty-year-old Hamlet, Luther was a man whose time was “out of joint” and whose burden was to “set it right.” Shakespeare’s political imagination, at once irreverent and admiring of the beauty in moral struggle, transforms the birth of the Reformation for the stage. That the play contains allusions to Luther and Lutheranism—most prominently to Wittenberg in act I and to the Diet of Worms in act IV—has also been acknowledged by scholars, beginning with Malone.5 These and other references have been taken to be topically appropriate, as commentary that fit with the setting of the play, Denmark, and the historical context of its performance and publication at a time in British history when the succession crisis came to a head with the possibility of the succession of James VI of Scotland, who had married Ann, sister of the King of Denmark. There are evident parallels between Elizabeth’s precarious situation with regard to the succession and Hamlet’s problematic political status in Denmark, between James’s unification of Scotland and England in his accession to the throne and Fortinbras’s unification of Norway and Denmark, at the end of the play, when he has, without requiring it, Hamlet’s dying voice. This is certainly one layer of historical allusion in the play, but it is only one and not by itself fully revealing. Historically remote as we are from Luther’s achievement, however, it is difficult for us to see the additional layer of reference, or to understand the Luther references as more than distinct pieces of topical allusion and commentary, much less to see how the layers of Elizabethan and Lutheran/Henry VIII history are interconnected, or how they comment on one another. As John Dover Wilson wrote in What Happens in Shakespeare, “we must be careful not to overlook those tacit understandings between Shakespeare and his audience which, just because they were tacit, because that is to say

The Source of Hamlet

271

they were part of the atmosphere of the time, are most likely to escape us.”6 A commoner in Shakespeare’s audience, required by law to attend church services every Sunday (though like most laws, this one was, as Christopher Haigh has pointed out, generally rather than specifically observed7), would have understood much more by these references and seen much more in the stage business of swearing on the cross of a sword hilt or placing a union in a stoup of wine, than we are likely to detect. The external circumstantial evidence, so to speak, that Shakespeare might have relied on Foxe as his primary source for Hamlet is: (1) it is the kind of material Shakespeare used elsewhere—popular, historical, moral, polemical (as he used Plutarch in Julius Caesar, written just before Hamlet, and Buchanan in Macbeth, written just after Hamlet); (2) it is acknowledged by critics that he used Foxe elsewhere, in Henry VIII, a play that covers a moment historically simultaneous with Luther’s in England, and the only play in which Luther is explicitly referred to (once);8 (3) the material is appropriate and responsive to the historical moment; (4) given Shakespeare’s evident artistic ambitions, it would have been strange if he had not written in some specific way on the most influential religious figure of the sixteenth century; and (5) it allows the pieces of the critical jigsaw puzzle surrounding the play to be put together. It explains why certain problems have continued to attract critical attention, how a range of critics (A. C. Bradley, John Dover Wilson, Roland Mushat Frye, Roy Battenhouse, and Linda Kay Hoffs, to name a few) could have circled around the question of Hamlet’s theology: Protestant (which denomination?) or Catholic? Luther, after all, was simultaneously a devout Catholic and the founder of Protestantism. As Bradley notices, there is in Hamlet “both a freer use of popular religious ideas, and a more decided, . . . intuition of a supreme power in human evil and good, than can be found in any other of Shakespeare’s tragedies.”9 It also helps to explain the persistent critical fascination with the Ur-Hamlet. The impetus behind this critical interest in an earlier play (perhaps by Kyd), I would suggest, is that there is something missing that is needed to explain the play. It has been hiding in plain sight. Samuel Johnson observes with some irritation in his “Proposals for Printing by Subscription, The Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, 1756” that “[a]nother impediment, not the least vexatious to the commentator, is the exactness with which Shakespeare followed his authors. Instead of dilating his thoughts into generalities, and expressing incidents with poetical latitude, he often combines circumstances unnecessary to his main design, only because he happened to find them together. Such passages can be illustrated only by him who has read the same story in the very book which Shakespeare consulted.”10 I go back to Johnson for a description of Shakespeare’s slapdash method (slapdash genius) because it seems to me the most appropriate description

272

Mary Ann McGrail

of the writer, rapidly and thoroughly at work on popular historical material with an eye to the stage. The correspondences are at points so striking that one may imagine Shakespeare writing his way straight through Foxe’s “History of Doctor Martin Luther,” playing with his fox as he tracks him, transforming the events of learned theological debate into dramatic action, and employing character and minor detail. Reading in this way, with the play and this portion of Foxe side by side, one is likely to notice a point toward the end of Foxe’s narrative where Foxe refers, out of nowhere, to Alexander the Great, and a correspondingly late point in the play, in the Gravediggers’ scene, where Hamlet performs a digressive riff on Alexander the Great: “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?” (V.i.205).11 It is possible to begin speculation about Shakespeare’s working method, as Johnson pointed out, only when reading an original edition of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (of which there were five prior to the first performance of Hamlet).12 For purposes of this essay I have used a copy of the fifth edition (1596-7) printed by Peter Short, in the holdings of the Huntington Library of which there were twelve hundred circulated, according to The Dictionary of National Biography. There is one certain way of establishing one work as a source for another work. This is when it is acknowledged in some formal way. Again, one might speculate here about the character named Reynaldo, an Italianized variant of “Renard,” meaning “fox.” Then too there is the half line added in first Folio, “hide Fox and all after,” which, out of the many additions and omissions between Quarto 2 and first Folio has persistently attracted editorial attention. Leaving aside for the moment such speculation, though I hope that some further suggestions about Quarto 2 may attract the renewed attention of experienced textual editors, there are three traditional methods of establishing a work as the source for another: (1) similarity in the use of narrative structure; (2) similarity in the use of character; and (3) similarity in the use of words and phrases. In the case of Hamlet, Shakespeare relies on Foxe’s history in all three ways. Shakespeare appears to construct from the primary material of Foxe’s historical narrative—he inverts, layers, and compresses the historical and character detail (as he does with other historical and non-historical source material in the plays), in order to call to mind specific pivotal historical moments and comment on them. Historical figures surface at points in the play, so that, with the partial exception of Hamlet and Luther, the correspondences are not even static. Several historical figures are used to create the succession of moments in the dramatic trajectory of one character and move like ghosts through it.

The Source of Hamlet

273

Because this argument (a methodologically standard argument in establishing one work as the source for another) goes against both the scholarly tradition and the contemporary critical grain, it can only be made convincing when the empirical evidence is presented in its entirety—when it can be shown that reading these pages of Foxe’s alongside the play furthers our understanding of it in a way that no other acknowledged source does. This is the work of a book and not possible here. Instead, let me introduce the material by offering a simple, structural argument, a list of fifteen narrative and character correspondences, in dramatic sequence, and then give examples of how the reading of Foxe against Hamlet opens up five moments in the play. I present first the structural argument to give some preliminary sense of how I believe Shakespeare’s political imagination is at work here. The argument is an experimental one, designed to throw the play out of focus, as it was thrown out of focus for me in first reading Foxe’s history alongside the play, in order that it may be brought back into focus with more precision. Act I: (1) The political context of the Reformation as Foxe describes it is that the world has been cast into darkness. The Church is a political entity, a state at war, in which the priests “make battle” and the Church exacts tribute from the rest of Europe. The play opens at midnight, with Denmark in a “warlike state,” occupying Norwegian land and exacting tribute from England. Its ceremonies are Catholic ceremonies. (2) Foxe, especially at the beginning and end of his account, notes that he relies heavily on a life of Luther by Melanchthon, Luther’s close friend, ally, eulogist, and first biographer.13 Horatio (most prominent at the beginning and end of the play) sets the scene in I.1 and Hamlet elects Horatio to tell his story in V.ii. (3) Luther, having read and studied the church fathers (especially St. Augustine, to whom he is led by reading St. Bernard), begins to see how far the Church has departed from true Christian doctrine. Hamlet, speaking with the Ghost, who is reported by Barnardo, an Italianized variant of Bernard (Italianization of names and words associates them with Rome in the play), gradually becomes convinced of Claudius’s crimes. (4) Having studied St. Augustine, Luther next begins his writing career abandoning canon law for the scriptures and what he has learned from Augustine. Hamlet’s first action after meeting with the Ghost is, strangely, to claim that he will forget all he has learned from books and write an account of what the Ghost told him. He will “wipe away all trivial fond records,/All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past/That youth and observation copied there,/And thy commandment all alone shall live/Within the book and volume of my brain, . . . My tables. Meet it is I set it down” (I.v.100–7). (5) Foxe is at pains to show Luther as a reformer rather than a revolutionary, so he emphasizes Luther’s subjection to church authority, his repeated periods of silence at the

274

Mary Ann McGrail

Church’s request and the initially cautious nature of his opposition to papal authority. Hamlet remains obedient to the King and Queen in remaining in Denmark rather than returning to Wittenberg, and hesitates to act, with long periods between his advances against Claudius (three months, for example, between his meeting with the Ghost and the Mousetrap). Act II: (6) The “beginnings of controversy,” according to Foxe, were occasioned by the Pope’s sending Friar Tetzel to Germany to sell indulgences (among other things, to raise money for the building of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome). Hamlet’s designing madness is preceded in the play by Polonius’s odd exchange with Reynaldo at the beginning of act II, in which he gives Reynaldo “money and notes” and asks him to slander Laertes, now in Paris. This moment recapitulates a description that Foxe quotes from original documents of the Church’s technique in extracting indulgence money from the laity. There are other allusions to the Church’s commodification of spirituality, emphatic in Foxe, throughout the play. For instance, the migration of the word “tender” in Polonius’s conversation with Ophelia in I.iii.99–134 (cautioning her against Hamlet’s shows of affection) from the language of feeling to the language of commodity. Consider too Hamlet’s odd remark to Ophelia in the play, “by’r Lady a must build Churches then” (III.ii.131). This comes in the context of a discussion of how long his father has been dead and in purgatory. The family members of a soul in purgatory would, as Foxe notes, pay the Church to reduce the sinner’s time there. This money was, in turn, used for the building of churches. Ophelia says that Old Hamlet has been dead “twice two months” (III.ii.126). If he has been dead that long, Hamlet observes archly, the clergy will have acquired enough money to begin building churches. Act III: (7) Luther is charged with heresy by Friar Tetzel, who uses Luther’s writings against him. Polonius explains to Claudius that Hamlet is mad for love of Ophelia and reveals the letters he has sent to Ophelia as evidence of this. There is a poem in one of these letters in which Hamlet says, “Doubt thou the stars are fire/Doubt that the sun doth move” (II.ii.115–16). These lines refer to the Copernican heresy of heliocentrism, the astronomical suggestion that the earth moves while the sun remains stationary. The Pope’s charge that Luther had abused the “gentleness” of the Church and Luther’s response: “I do reverence and follow the church of Rome in all my sayings and doings, present, past, and to come; and if any thing hath been, or shall be said by me to the contrary, I count it, and will that it be counted and taken, as though it had never been spoken.” He is summoned to Rome but goes instead to Augsburg, where he first begins to challenge papal authority in an exchange with Cardinal Cajetan. Luther’s first open challenge to Rome’s power is staged in Hamlet’s private interview with Ophelia, overheard by Polonius and Claudius, where Ophelia returns his letters (Luther’s writings) and Hamlet denies having given them to her (as Luther dis-

The Source of Hamlet

275

claimed any writings that went against Church doctrine). Claudius concludes that Hamlet is not simply mad but dangerous, much as Rome began to conclude that Luther had become a political threat. (8) The Leipzig disputation between Luther and Eck where Luther denies papal infallibility is replayed by Hamlet’s interview with his mother in her closet, where Hamlet openly accuses Claudius of treason. Recall that throughout the play Hamlet is obedient to his mother not to Claudius, a representation of Luther’s obedience to the Church not the Pope. In the same scene, on a theological plane, Luther’s questioning of the sacrament of confession and penance is described (recall that he reduced the sacraments from seven to two, namely baptism and the Eucharist).14 (9) The Diet of Worms, where Luther was asked to recant his teachings and works, where he hesitates and then refuses to recant (“hereupon I stand”), is parodied in Hamlet’s pun on the Diet of Worms and his reluctance to reveal the whereabouts of Polonius’s body. Act IV: (10) The exchange of letters between Luther, Duke Ferdinand, and the Pope, in which Foxe remarks that the Pope’s letter of complaint against Luther (which he quotes in full), could as easily have been written by Luther against the Pope “turn but the names around.” Hamlet’s substitution of forged letters for those carried by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the King of England commanding Hamlet’s death is one of the several points of contact between Foxe’s plot and the Danish story to referred to at the beginning of this essay. (11) Luther, despite the enmity of the Church hierarchy, the Pope, and the emperor, enjoys popular support, which protects him from Rome’s designs on his life. He is sent away from Worms under guard. Claudius twice mentions Hamlet’s popularity, referring to the “great love the general gender bear” to him as a reason for his restraint. He sends Hamlet under guard to England (IV.iii.6; IV.vii.18). (12) Luther is hidden by the Saxon nobles, and writes letters to the German princes explaining his intention to continue teaching and writing. Hamlet is rescued by pirates and writes letters to Horatio and Claudius announcing his return to Denmark. Act V: (13) Pope Adrian defeats French forces. Claudius suppresses Laertes’s insurrection on his return from France, saying, “where is my Switzers?” (IV.v.96). (14) Luther is blamed for peasant rebellions in Germany, which he writes against. He differs in this from his fellow reformer Carolostadt, who has promoted revolt. Hamlet remarks with disapproval in the Gravediggers’ scene that “[t]he age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe” (V.i.135–37). Hamlet fights with Laertes over Ophelia’s grave. Laertes, like Hamlet, has popular support and has attempted to overthrow the King. Ophelia’s death, Claudius fears, will provide occasion for popular revolt. (15) From the beginning of his account, Foxe has emphasized that the

276

Mary Ann McGrail

German princes are politic. They wish to break with Rome and, while maintaining a deceptive alliance with the Pope, they use Luther as a pretext for taking Germany out from under papal authority. From the beginning of the play, Fortinbras has posed a threat that Claudius, in his increasing preoccupation with Hamlet, has ignored. To the extent that he allows Fortinbras’s forces to pass through Denmark against Poland, this provides Fortinbras the opportunity to conquer Denmark and recapture the lands his father lost. Land, and property generally in this play, allude to collections of souls, as in Hamlet’s reference to “two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats” (IV.iv.25). This is an implicit equation suggestive of the Church’s pricing of souls in its practice of selling indulgences, the practice that singularly precipitated Luther’s writings against the Church (beginning with his famous “Ninety five Theses,” an explicit attack on indulgences), according to Foxe. The Reformation was a war over who owned souls—state, Church, or individual—and whether they could be owned (bought and sold). This helps explain why the language of commodity—the vacillation between ducats and pounds, for instace—permeates the play. Shakespeare’s political imagination is at work here. It is as though he plays with Foxe as he tracks him. The perspective of an audience member informed by ecclesiastical history and Reformation politics would recognize bold anticlerical puns in Claudius’s continual firing of the canon, a reference to the armament of the Church—its Canon. It also refers to the drunkenness of the Danes, their penchant for Rhenish wine (or German red wine), suggestive of Church abuses of the Eucharist. There is a kind of literalism in the transformation of events in the source material so that the reading of a book becomes a conversation with a Ghost, for to read an old book well is to converse with the dead. A theological debate becomes a sword fight—use of the wrong theological language at the time being potentially fatal—another theme of Foxe’s. The characters, like the figures in Foxe’s history, are in motion in the play, so that the development of Luther’s theology based on salvation by faith rather than by works is documented in Hamlet’s soliloquies and remarks in a kind of theological stenography. An example is the doctrine of predestination in Hamlet’s comment that “[t]here’s a divinity that shapes our ends/rough-hew them how we will” (V.ii.10–11), or the readily identifiable Biblical reference, “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (V.ii.215–16). From the beginnings of Luther’s career, he was, according to Foxe, concerned with the status of the afterlife and man’s access to it, especially since the economic basis of the Church was derived from a particular presentation of the nature of the afterlife to the laity. This preoccupation is reflected in Hamlet’s soliloquies, in which he returns to “the respect which makes calamity of so long life” (III.i.68–69), the influence of the nature of man’s mortality over his life. The doctrine of original sin (“this too, too sullied flesh” [I.ii.129], “the

The Source of Hamlet

277

stamp of one defect” [I.iv.31]) surfaces in the play, as do the Augustinian challenge to the increasingly significant Church view of the immaculate conception, the first theological point that Foxe takes up at the beginning of his history of martyrs under the reign of Henry VIII (“conception is a blessing” [II.ii.184]); Luther’s translation and commentary of the Bible (II.ii.192–217, 399–416); and his reduction of the sacraments from seven to two. As mentioned above, a sequence of historical figures form the moments in the trajectory of an individual character. Thus Friar Tetzel, whose selling of the Pope’s indulgences in Germany precipitated Luther’s “Ninety five Theses,” materializes in Polonius’s interview with Ophelia, in which he warns her against Hamlet and in the scene with Reynaldo. And the adages and style of Erasmus are parodied in Polonius’s advice to Laertes and Claudius on Hamlet’s madness. Erasmus’s fence-straddling with regard to Luther, and Luther’s final break with the Catholic theologian and philosopher, are recounted by Foxe with excerpts from Erasmus’s letters. Laertes himself enacts the parts of both Carolostadt, an overly zealous and indiscreet promoter of the Reformation who caused insurrection in Germany, and, later, Zwinglius, a true friend to Luther’s cause who became his doctrinal opponent. Gertrude and Ophelia are associated with the Church in its two different feminine aspects: the whore of Babylon and the Virgin Mary. Ophelia is the character most closely associated with Catholic symbol and ritual in the play. For example, her death and funeral procession contain a number of elements of the feast of Corpus Christi, a feast day marked by processions decorated with garlands of flowers honoring the body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The decline in belief in such Catholic ritual, which the Reformation required, is figured in Ophelia’s mad distribution of flowers to members of the Danish court and in the covering of her corpse in flowers, a staging of the fragmentation of a ritual. A brief note about the third kind of correspondence, namely language. In close reading one can see Shakespeare using Foxe’s language repeatedly, including many shared words that are rare in Shakespeare’s vocabulary, such as “perpend,” “innovation,” “indifferent,” “reform,” and “out of frame.” There are points at which Shakespeare appears to be punning against his source text, dismembering Foxe’s often irritating polemic as he cannibalizes it to provide depth to each moment of the play. Let us now consider five moments of the play that are opened up by this understanding of Shakespeare’s political imagination at work. First, having prefaced the narrative with prophesies foretelling Luther’s coming and his complaining, among other things, that there were too many saints, Foxe begins by noting the significance of Luther’s reading. Foxe is concerned to explain how Luther came to his ideas through reading the great theologians of the past and through reading, translation, and commentary on the Bible.

278

Mary Ann McGrail

The first important intellectual influence on Luther was St. Bernard, who, according to Foxe, caused Luther to understand “God’s express commandment” and to work out his doctrine that “man is freely justified by faith” rather than works, which is the core of all Luther’s teachings. The first character to speak in Hamlet is the sentinel, Barnardo, an Italianized variant of the name of St. Bernard. (The name is spoken three times in the first twenty lines of the play, an unusual repetition, to make certain it is registered by the audience). It is Barnardo who attempts to convince Horatio of the Ghost’s existence, saying, “And let us once again assail your ears,/That are so fortified against our story” (I.i.3–35). That is, he makes an argument that they should have faith in his account of what he has seen. The first line of the play, Barnardo’s question to Francisco, is, “Who’s there?” As scholars have noted, it is the right of the sentry on guard to make the challenge, so that the order has been reversed. The sentry whom he challenges is Francisco, in context an allusion to St. Francis of Assisi, pictured in iconography of the period as sorrowing over the corruption of the Church, which explains the curious remark, not previously adequately explained, of Francisco, that he is “sick at heart” (I.i.9). St. Bernard pointed Luther back to St. Augustine, whose works provided the impetus for Luther’s intellectual and spiritual break with the Catholic Church and the theological underpinnings of his Reformation writings. It is Augustine’s work, Foxe tells us, that Luther remembered constantly in the development of his theology. The Ghost’s refrain is “remember me.” The next two characters to appear are Horatio and Marcellus. Marcellus is named after the martyred centurion who, in the midst of a banquet in Rome, throws down his arms, believing that a true Christian cannot justifiably engage in violence against his fellow man. Marcellus takes up arms against the Ghost and then drops them, saying, “We do it wrong, being so majestical,/ to offer it the show of violence” (I.i.147–48).15 The first three figures in the play are saints: Francisco (St. Francis); Barnardo (St. Bernard); and Marcellus (St. Marcellus the centurion). They are introduced in reverse historical order, which sets the clock of history going backward in the play. This is a dramatic observation about the political nature of reform, namely that it moves backward in time, back to the beginnings, in order to refound a system according to its origins, much as Luther moved back in his reading to the writings of the church fathers, the beginning of Catholic theology. Reform, as opposed to revolution, turns the clock of history back. There is another metaphorical insight into the nature of reform in one of the most beautiful images of the play, the first account of Hamlet’s madness as told by Ophelia. Hamlet has visited her closet: . . . That done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn’d

The Source of Hamlet

279

He seem’d to find his way without his eyes, For out o’doors he went without their helps, And to the last bended their light on me. (II.i.95–100)

This may be understood as a poetic meditation on the nature of reform. The image is described to the audience rather than staged, so that it must be pictured in order to be understood. Hamlet keeps his eyes on Ophelia as he moves away from her, as the reformer keeps his eyes on the historical beginnings of things while moving forward in history. As a number of critics have also remarked, the Ghost was a dramatic innovation on the stage at the time, a real rather than spectacular effect. This parallels the way in which Augustine’s words were real and immediate to Luther, containing a “commandment.” Hamlet doubts the Ghost’s word, and in the Reformation context this makes sense in two ways: (1) the Ghost contradicts the existing order, as Luther’s reading of St. Augustine contradicted the Church Canon; and (2) the Ghost is in purgatory, a place that the Reformation caused to disappear. The existence of a purgatory, again, was the basis for the Church’s selling of indulgences, which reduced a sinner’s time spent in torment. In the context of the appearances of the Ghost, two unusual spellings in Quarto 2 that have repeatedly caught the attention of editors of the play may lend support to this understanding, complementing this view of the Ghost as an analogue to St. Augustine. Horatio refers to the “post-haste and rummage in the land.” In Quarto 2, “rummage” spelled “Romeage,” a pun on the destructive presence of Rome in the land, which is underscored by two mentions of Rome in the next ten lines. And later, in Hamlet’s response to the Ghost below ground, “Art though there truepenny/Thou hearest this fellow in the Sellerige,” the spelling of Sellerige is unusual and has repeatedly caught the attention of editors. Set up with the reference to currency (“truepenny”), this is an unrecognized pun on the notion of a place where time is sold.16 The overall movement of the Reformation depended on the elimination of purgatory. Again, a major component of Luther’s theological-political project was the dismantling of the general belief in purgatory and thisworldly influence over the status of souls in purgatory (by what amounted to payments to the Church). This change in popular conviction about the existence of an intermediate otherworld with which the living could communicate is recorded in Hamlet’s progression in the play from a conversation with the Ghost of his father to a meditation on Yorick’s skull in act V. Hamlet begins the play speaking with a Ghost, and he ends it listening to a Gravedigger describe the reality of the body’s decomposition as Hamlet contemplates a skull. The movement from a conversation with a Ghost to a monologue on a skull stages the alteration in popular belief that Luther’s Reformation movement produced. It was a movement from communication

280

Mary Ann McGrail

with the spirits of the dead (mediated by the saints), which could take on the shapes of bodies, to the harsh physical reality of death. Fourth, one must consider Hamlet’s “reform” of the players’ dramatic technique. It is in this exchange that the words “reformed” and “reform” are used, which are unusual in Shakespeare’s work. Hamlet instructs the players to reform their stagecraft, not to exaggerate their motions or deviate from their lines, but “hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (III.ii.21–24). The intention described is the same as the intended effect of a weekly church service. Foxe describes Luther as a reformer, who turned men back to scripture—to the words of the Bible— and “desired none other of them, than reformation according to the sacred word of God and consonancy of holy Scriptures, which effectually in his heart he desired.” Hamlet similarly tells the players to “reform it altogether” (III.ii.38). He describes the exaggerations and vain improvisations that bad actors make in departing from their script. This corresponds to a critical moment in Foxe’s account, when Luther begins to challenge the daily authority of the Church by changing its ceremonies. He insists that the elaborate ceremonies instituted by the Catholic Church in their celebration of Mass be reformed, that the priests be required to adhere to the scripture rather than the canon law, much as Hamlet tells the players to stick to the script. The exaggeration of gesture of which Hamlet complains (“do not saw the air with your hand”) suggests the highly performative nature of the Catholic Mass, which, from the Protestant point of view, had too much of the “inexplicable dumbshow” about it. This scene is perhaps the outstanding example of what the philosopher Stanley Cavell once referred to in speaking of “the competition between theater and religion.”17 Fifth, the one defect Foxe admits in Luther is that he differed with his fellow Protestant Zwinglius on the nature of the “presence” of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Luther maintained that the body and blood of Christ were actually present, not merely metaphorically so. On what seems a minor theological point, the movement split. In the play, Hamlet and Laertes have both challenged Claudius’s authority. Just before their duel begins, Hamlet says, “This presence knows, and you must needs have heard,/How I am punish’d with a sore distraction” (Vii.225–26). This is, simultaneously, a reference to the presence of the King and Queen, and a pun on the “presence” of the Eucharist. Claudius proceeds to call for a stoup of wine in which he places a “union” or an “onixe.” This gesture would have called to mind the blessing of the bread and wine, at which moment transubstantiation occurs, according to Catholic theology. The duel represents the theological debate between Luther and Zwinglius over the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine. The significance attached to the bread and the

The Source of Hamlet

281

wine is the poisoned tip of theological debate. What is genuinely at issue (the corruption of the Church in its departure from its foundations/the usurpation by Claudius) is displaced by what is, from the perspective of the larger achievement of the Reformation (as Foxe emphasizes) a minor doctrinal matter, although it was of great consequence at the time. At this point in history, according to Foxe, God has provided two things necessary to a Reformation; the printing press and Martin Luther. The significance of the advent of printing is expressed in the play by the presence of books, which is, strictly speaking, as much an anachronism as the clock in Julius Caesar. By the Gravediggers’ scene in V.i, we are made aware that even some of the commoners are reading and interpreting the Bible for themselves. In a debate over whether Adam “bore arms,” the Gravedigger upbraids his companion, saying, “What art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could he dig without arms?” (V.i.35–37). The translation and dissemination of the Bible in the vernacular was, of course, one of the most significant of Luther’s achievements and one of the most important consequences of the Reformation. By recreating the Reformation in Hamlet using the events, characterizations, and insights of Foxe’s resistant polemic sequentially, though with artistic methods appropriate to the textures of the different moments in Foxe, Shakespeare writes for what was anticipated to be a potentially apocalyptic moment. It was a time in which anxieties as to the political and religious future of England were at a height. Elizabeth had prosecuted the Reformation begun by her father, Henry VIII (an opponent of Luther’s). She designed to free England from political and economic subjection to Rome, and, having been excommunicated by the Pope in 1570 (like Luther earlier), she was still suppressing Masses and Catholic insurrections. She had not appointed a successor. The most likely candidate was James VI, son of a Catholic monarch, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been executed after making attempts on the life of Elizabeth in league with the Pope.18 The St. Bartholomew Massacre, memorialized by Marlowe in The Massacre at Paris, was within living memory. The paramount question was which way Elizabeth’s successor would take England (a country which had only recently broken with the Church), especially if it were to be James, who was an avowed Presbyterian. The dramatization of Foxe’s account of Luther’s life and work in Hamlet speaks directly to what the historian Wallace Macaffrey called “the acute religious sensibilities” of the time, and it applies pressure to the historical moment.19 In terms of Shakespeare’s political intent, the play is an indirect admonition to the court, and a reminder of the consequences of religious change and subjection to Rome. There is other material from Luther’s life contained in the play that is not found in Foxe. For instance, the fact that Luther’s father was a miner is alluded to in Hamlet’s reference to the Ghost as “old mole” and “pioneer,”

282

Mary Ann McGrail

slang terms for miner (I.v.170–71). There is also the fact that Luther had refused to sanction Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which Foxe politicly suppresses. Given Luther’s mythic status at the end of the sixteenth century, and given the availability of his writings and those of his opponents, it is reasonable that Shakespeare could have taken such detail from other sources.20 Henry’s attack on Luther, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, had won for him the title of Defender of the Faith from the Pope. Notwithstanding, in an attempt to forge a political alliance against the Church with the head of the reform movement in Germany, Henry had later solicited Luther’s approval of his divorce from Catherine. Luther had responded, in a letter to the intermediary, Dr. Barnes (1531), an early English Protestant, rejecting Henry’s claim that the marriage should be annulled on the grounds that he could not legitimately marry his dead brother’s wife, that this was in fact “incestuous” under Mosaic law.21 These events are, I believe, figured in a careful inversion in the play, in Hamlet’s insistence that his mother’s marriage to his uncle is incestuous. As critics have pointed out, there is biblical authority for this, the same biblical authority (Leviticus) on which Luther relied for his opposition to Henry VIII’s divorce.22 Hamlet’s accusatory exclamation to Ophelia, “I say we’ll have no mo’ marriage,” would have been heard as an echo of Luther’s refusal to sanction Henry VIII’s divorce by those whom Gabriel Harvey refers to as “the wiser sort.”23 (Hamlet’s attack on Ophelia also records a rejection of one of the five sacraments with which Luther dispensed, namely the sacrament of marriage.) This is one of several points where Lutheran and English Reformation history are simultaneously present on the surface of the play— consubstantiate, so to speak. Hamlet’s charge of incest is in this context primarily a theological and political complaint rather than a sexual one. The inversion calls to mind the historical events in such a way as to comment on them. The identification of a primary source for Hamlet—a source for the structure, events, character, images, and words that provided material for the construction of the play—if it is finally persuasive, would require an adjustment of vision in reading, viewing, and interpreting the play. It would also give insight into the workings of what I have called Shakespeare’s political imagination—his ability to grasp, in Foxe’s polemic, the complex political pressures at work at a critical historical point, and to give them a local habitation and a name. To best understand the artistic method used, which could allow a restaging of the seminal event in Reformation history to go critically unremarked for so long, one might consider the play as a perspectival painting which when viewed from the twentieth century perspective is an Oedipal drama of revenge. From a contextual perspective, that view disappears and the play may be seen as a restaging of the birth of the Reformation, using the life of Luther as a skeletal framework. As with a Renaissance perspectival

The Source of Hamlet

283

painting, the observer’s occupation of one viewpoint makes what is seen from the other viewpoint invisible, even if it is no less present. Within the Reformation context provided by Foxe, it appears that in Hamlet’s language the creation of a new theological language is being documented in the play. A language that in the received context seems at first madness, but is in fact biblically methodical, and is ultimately the clearest in the play. It is a language of deepening conscience, as man’s relation to God becomes immediate (without mediation) and the events in spiritual life (such as penance and confession, on which the Catholic Church had based so much of its ritual and through which it had retained its control of the hearts, minds, and purses of men) become private rather than public. It is also a language that was in use in England at the time, where, as the Danish Gravedigger says of the present/absent Hamlet, “there the men are as mad as he” (V.i.149). Thus it is possible to see in Luther’s theological point about the Eucharist an insight that may have provided Shakespeare with a working method. The key to understanding the use of the Foxe source material is simultaneity. The simultaneous coexistence of two plots and two historical moments forming a third historical moment, which, if consumed rightly, takes its effect. It is also a play about speaking with and remembering the words of a Ghost, which is what one does when one reads an old book seriously enough to be moved by its words, finally, to act. This sketch of Shakespeare’s compositional method in Hamlet, using Foxe’s life of Luther, offers insight into what a writer of genius can do with popular materials ready at hand, through the allusion of stage gesture and the clever circumvention of legal strictures on the drama. Shakespeare’s political context and political intentions have been discussed by others, and there is nothing novel in asserting that he was carefully attuned to contemporary politics or had political intentions, even ambitions. Like the thinkers to whom Harvey Mansfield has introduced his students, Shakespeare was able to comment on the most volatile theological and political questions of his time, and to avoid persecution. As Mansfield has shown in his scholarship, great thinkers find ways to convey their ideas, however heretical and politically dangerous these ideas may be. To understand their contributions, we need first to learn how to read and interpret them, how to move toward them rather than move them toward us. Only then, as Mansfield teaches, can we hope to grasp how comprehensive their criticisms of classical, modern, or contemporary mores, may be.

NOTES A version of this essay was presented at the meeting of the International Shakespeare Association, April 1996, Los Angeles, California. With special thanks to Michael R.

284

Mary Ann McGrail

Doyen of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and Professor Lloyd Weinreb, the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. 1. First noted critically by Samuel Johnson, this understanding of the source of Hamlet has been gradually codified, culminating in Geoffrey Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. vii, in Major Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 3–79. Bullough’s method is to catalogue all possible source material for the plays, and he lists fifteen different works that Shakespeare may have used in the composition of Hamlet, dividing the sources into five categories: “Source”; “Possible Source”; “Possible Historical Source”; “Analogue”; and “Probable Historical Allusions.” Saxo’s story alone is listed as a pure “source” for the play. The editors of the current Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor) present Belleforest’s account of the Danish story as the primary source. Arden editor Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982), begins his description of sources with an inconclusive discussion of the “Ur-Hamlet,” and goes on to discuss Saxo, Belleforest, Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe and Nashe’s Tragedy of Dido, Nashe’s pamphlet, “Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil,” and Timothy Bright’s “A Treatise of Melancholy,” and he finally suggests borrowings from Montaigne’s Essays. 2. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1917), vol. vii, 586. 3. William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie. At London. Printed by I.R. for N.L. and come to be sold at his shoppe under Saint Dunstans Church in Fleetstreet 1604. For purposes of this paper I have consulted the Kemble-Devonshire copy of Quarto 2 in the holdings of the Huntington Library. See John Dover Wilson’s seminal, The Manuscript of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Problems of Its Transmission: An Essay in Critical Bibliography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 2 vols., for the firmest arguments as to the accuracy of Quarto 2 (over Quarto 1 and first Folio), and for specific interpretations of the significance of words, phrases, and typography (especially punctuation) found only in Quarto 2. Dover Wilson argued convincingly that Q2 was unique in that it was based on the author’s foul papers, printed directly from a manuscript in Shakespeare’s own hand (101). Dover Wilson’s exhaustive textual work on Q2 shaped his interpretation of the play (see his What Happens in Hamlet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951]) and complements the argument that Foxe’s “History of Doctor Martin Luther” is a likely source for the play. An example of the relevant consequences of his textual work for interpretation of the play is found in his commentary on act 5, scene 1: “The brusque direction Enter K.Q. Laertes and the corse, which is all the provision made in Q2 for the funeral of Ophelia, taken with the prefix Doct. which heads the speeches of the ‘churlish priest,’ offers a very different interpretation of the ceremony to that derived from F1 and elaborated by subsequent editors, an interpretation indeed which fits in with Hamlet’s choice of a Protestant university and shows the religious establishment of Denmark to be Protestant believers” (The Manuscript, 183). This last point is one of several details that support the idea that the play tracks the development of the Reformation, with the final religious ceremony

The Source of Hamlet

285

in it conducted by a Protestant rather than a Catholic divine. It is significant, as Dover Wilson notes, that this is to be found only in Q2 (first printed in 1604, just after the accession of James I). Other textual variants which Dover Wilson lights on square with this understanding of the undercurrent of the play as systematic Reformation allusion. See Dover Wilson, The Manuscript, 21, note 12. 4. Foxe three times dates the beginning of Luther’s career as 1516, explaining that this was the year prophesied as the beginning of the Reformation and the year in which Luther first began to write. He gives the date of Luther’s death as 1546, but he twice refers to Luther’s writing career as twenty-nine rather than thirty years in length. In the context of the unfolding of the providential, Protestant history that Foxe records, Luther’s active religious life as God’s chosen minister was only as long as his writing life, a period of twenty-nine or thirty years. 5. Horace Howard Furness, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet, Vol. I (London and Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott and Co., 1877), gloss to I.ii.113, page 40. 6. Wilson, What Happens in Shakespeare, 26. 7. Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). This important point is implicit in Haigh’s title and is made throughout the book, although especially in his judicious final chapter, 285–95. See also D. M. Palliser, “Popular reactions to the Reformation during the years of uncertainty, 1530–1570” in The English Reformation Revised, ed. Christopher Haigh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 94–113. Palliser makes the point that “[n]ot only is too little known of popular opinion, but also of its variety, which can only with difficulty be forced into the strait-jacket of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ labels. How does one classify the testators who bequeathed their souls in full Catholic form but then added their hope of salvation solely through the merits of Christ’s passion?” (113). See also Haigh’s own essay in the same volume, “Anticlericalism and the English Reformation,” 56–74. Both works emphasize the mélange of religious beliefs and sentiments in England in the sixteenth century that helped to create an Elizabethan audience highly attuned to the variety of religious allusions in this play (allusions to Catholic ceremony and belief, and several versions of Protestant ceremonies and beliefs). One category of allusion that moves, so to speak, in two separate directions in the play, is allusion to religious texts, to the Catholic Mass Book and the Book of Common Prayer, both present in the play. The consideration of Foxe’s “History of Doctor Martin Luther” as a source for the play is helpful precisely in appreciating the variety and subtlety of these allusions, a variety and subtlety appropriate to an English audience at the beginning of a new century of religious turmoil. 8. Bullough, vols. IV and VII. Bullough identifies Buchanan as a “Probable Source” for Macbeth as opposed to simply a “Source” (the rubric under which Holinshed’s Chronicles fall). He identifies Foxe as one of two known “Sources” for Henry VIII, the other being Holinshed. See also McGrail, ed. Shakespeare’s Plutarch (Tokyo: Shabun 1997), for a discussion of source criticism more generally. 9. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1904; rpt. 1957), 174. 10. Samuel Johnson, “Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, 1756,” in Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Sherbo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 54–55.

286

Mary Ann McGrail

11. All citations from the play are taken from Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982). 12. The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. vii, 587. 13. Foxe acknowledges that he also relies on a long account of Luther’s life and work by John Sleidanus contained in A famous chronicle of our time . . . concerning the state of religion and common wealth, during the raigne of the Emperour Charles the Fift. Translated out of Latin into Englisshe by Jhon Daus. Imprinted at London by Jhon Daye for Abraham Veale and Nicholas England the 25 of September 1560. Melanchthon’s biography, however, figures much more prominently in large part because it is presented as a firsthand account, the kind of account that Foxe tends to favor throughout his martyrology. For detailed discussion of Luther biographies available in English at the time, see William A. Clebsch, “The Elizabethans on Luther,” in Interpreters of Luther: Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968). 14. Luther wrote extensively on the nature of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper (“The Blessed Sacrament of the holy and True Body and Blood of Christ and the Brotherhoods”; “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics”; and “Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper,” among other works. For an account of which works were available in English at the time, see William A. Clebsch, “The Earliest Translations of Luther into English,” Harvard Theological Review LVI (January 1963): 75–86. In “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” Luther states that “[t]o begin with, I must deny that there are seven sacraments, and for the present maintain that there are but three: baptism, penance, and the bread. All three have been subjected to a miserable captivity by the Roman curia, and the church has been robbed of all her liberty” (Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. T. F. Lull [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989], 274). Luther subsequently dropped penance as a sacrament. This temporary hesitation regarding the sacramental nature of penance is figured in Hamlet III.iii and iv, scenes in which prominent Lutheran resonances have been noted by Roland Mushat Frye. It was to these attacks on the backbone of Church ritual that Henry VIII responded directly in Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a writing to which Foxe awkwardly refers, questioning Henry VIII’s authorship. As Eamon Duffy has reemphasized in The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), it is hardly possible to underestimate the centrality of the sacrament of the Eucharist to religious observance and all religious controversies of the period. 15. For brief but serviceable accounts of these saints, see David Hugh Farmer’s The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 16. “Sellerige” and “Romeage” are both capitalized, which may have some significance (as do other capitalizations in Quarto 2). Two great textual editors of the first half of the twentieth century, W. W. Greg and John Dover Wilson, in addressing the editorial problems of Hamlet, hold open the possibility of “emphasis capitals,” although Greg does so unenthusiastically. I offer here the more conservative of the two views. In The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare: A Survey of the Foundations of the Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), Greg writes: “Capitalization is another accident of the manuscript. And here two varieties should be distinguished. The fashion of giving capitals to certain words in a sentence has of course varied greatly from age to age. Different authors and different printers may also have had their own habits—

The Source of Hamlet

287

including perhaps the use of so-called ‘emphasis’ capitals. It may be regarded in much the same way as punctuation, and a printer probably followed his copy to much the same extent,” lii–iii. 17. Stanley Cavell, presentation at the plenary session of the International Shakespeare Association, April 1996, Los Angeles, California. 18. For one account, see Wallace Macaffrey, Elizabeth I (New York: Routledge, 1993), 303–54. 19. Macaffrey, Elizabeth I, 434–41. 20. Clebsch, “The Earliest Translations of Luther into English,” 75–86. 21. For a full account of this dispute and the historical circumstances surrounding it (which Foxe suppresses), see David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1986). 22. Richmond Noble, Shakespeare’s Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer as Exemplified in the Plays of the First Folio. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (New York: Macmillan, 1935). Noble points out that the charge of incest derives from the Book of Common Prayer (the Table of Kindred and Affinity), which states simply, “A woman may not marry with her Husband’s Brother.” He notes that “Elizabeth’s legitimacy depended on the illegality of her father’s marriage with his brother’s widow. The audience would thus sympathize with Hamlet’s strong feelings” (265). Naseeb Shaheen, in his Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), is skeptical that the six references to the incestuous nature of the marriage allude to the Book of Common Prayer, and recognizes the biblical authority for this in Leviticus 18.16. 23. As cited by Jenkins in Hamlet, 4.

14 Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume Sharon R. Krause

Hume’s moral theory is most often treated independently of the political reflections found in his History of England.1 Yet there is good reason to explore the relationship between them. For one thing, the theory of moral sentiment that emerges from his Treatise of Human Nature addresses a dilemma of human action that is manifest most potently in politics. The moral enthusiasm that frequently animates principled political action is a powerful engine of human agency, and its forcefulness in this regard is, for Hume, quite sinister. He worried about the destabilizing effects of moral enthusiasm in politics and wanted very much to moderate political agency. His new moral science, which reveals moral value to be based on nothing more mysterious or more elevated than common human sentiments (properly conceived), was intended to undercut the force of religious convictions oriented to otherworldly ends and authorities, and so to neutralize the sources of zealotry. In this respect, Hume’s moral science was a natural friend to the new commercial mentality, which emphasized utility, security, and bourgeois satisfactions, and which Hume saw as being similarly inclined to foster predictability and moderation in human action. Paradoxically, however, Hume’s political reflections tell a different story. As an historical matter, Hume shows, it was not only predictability and moderation but the frenzied zeal of religiously inspired revolutionaries that was key to establishing political liberty in England. The sense of purpose that animated their action involved a reference to higher authority and an aspiration to ends more noble than common sentiments. Yet the aspirational dimensions of agency are compromised by the moral theory offered in Hume’s Treatise, which shows the sources of our ostensibly lofty ideals to be all too human. If our principles of moral and political right ultimately 289

290

Sharon R. Krause

are reducible to nothing nobler than common sentiments, how inspirational can these principles be? Can they animate great acts of courage and sacrifice? The fact that Hume grounds moral action in sentiments may undercut the sense of higher purpose that is such a powerful engine of moral and political action, including the civil resistance that Hume himself regarded as having been instrumental to the establishment of political liberty in England. Part one of this paper briefly reconstructs Hume’s sentiment-based account of moral value and the view of moral agency that goes with it, illuminating the political concern for liberty that informs them. Part two explores moral enthusiasm and the aspirational dimensions of political action as depicted in Hume’s History, showing the tensions between Hume’s moral science and the kinds of enthusiastic action that liberty sometimes demands. In concluding, I explore some implications of these findings for political liberty and the problem of extremism in contemporary liberaldemocratic politics.

DEMYSTIFYING MORAL AGENCY Reading Hume’s theory of moral sentiment through the lens of his political writings suggests a powerful motivation for the sentiment-based approach to morality developed in the Treatise. To be sure, there are important philosophical reasons for this approach as well, reasons that are grounded in Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics. But he saw morality as a practical phenomenon and his explanation of it is sensitive to the challenges—and the dangers—of practical life.2 Chief among these dangers is moral enthusiasm. The enthusiast is a person animated above all by “inspiration from above.”3 He aims too high, aspires to too much. His high aspirations inevitably lead him to flights of “fancy in the invisible regions or world of spirits” and to principles that are “altogether unaccountable and seeming quite beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties.”4 He is an idealist whose “imagination swells with great, but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond.”5 The “frenzy” of enthusiasm leads to “a contempt for the common rules of reason, morality, and prudence,” and consequently it “produces the most cruel disorders in human society.”6 It generates cruelty to oneself insofar as the singular passion for sanctity rails against one’s natural desires, issuing in the harshness and “gloom” of psychological repression.7 It arouses cruelty toward others as well because the zeal for higher purposes obstructs one’s faculty of sympathy, hindering the communication of sentiments and making it difficult to feel with one’s fellows. And by fostering contempt for common rules, enthusiasm also renders action unpredictable, which poses problems for so-

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

291

cial coordination and political stability. In short, enthusiasm is moral agency run amok, wreaking havoc in politics and undermining social order. Hume feared it for its destabilizing effects; he knew that social and political breakdown is not only miserable in itself but frequently followed by tyranny. His moral science aims to demystify moral agency and therefore to make possible the kind of moderate political engagement that supports a decent freedom in liberal constitutional regimes. Hume thus treats moral standards as grounded in nothing more mysterious than human sentiments, albeit sentiments that are arrived at by means of an impartial standpoint. The distinction between virtue and vice is based on the “feeling or sentiment of blame” (T 469) and the feeling of “satisfaction” or approbation (T 471). Through this sentiment-based approach, Hume can account for normative standards without depending on “incomprehensive relations or qualities, which never did exist in nature, nor even in our imagination, with any clear and distinct conception” (T 476). His is a naturalistic view of the sources of moral and political right, which subjects them to the scrutiny of modern scientific understanding. To be sure, the adoption of an impersonal perspective is crucial to moral sentiment and the standards it generates. Sentiments that “denominate[]” an action or character as “morally good or evil” arise only when the object “is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest” (T 472). This generalized perspective rests on the faculty of sympathy. Sympathy enables us to experience the sentiments that a given character trait generates for the person who possesses it and those affected by it. Feelings of approval respond to the “usefulness” and “agreeableness” of the object under consideration, and sympathy communicates these feelings (T 591). Much more could be said (and has been said) about the generalized perspective of moral sentiment in Hume.8 For one thing, it is important to see that reason has a role here. Reason aids in the generalized standpoint by helping us imagine the sentiments of those affected, and it also helps us reflect on the value of existing sentiments (our own and those of others). A good character, as Hume says, is one that “can bear its own survey,” and the deliberation involved in this survey engages certain functions of reason as well as feeling (T 620; E 119).9 Indeed, moral sentiment thoroughly integrates reason and feeling. For present purposes, however, the key point is that common human sentiments, arrived at through reflective sympathy, stand at the foundation of moral standards. Hume was convinced that such common sentiments exist, although he was sensitive to the facts of individual and cultural diversity. He makes frequent reference to human nature in his writings.10 In discussing his own philosophical purposes in Treatise book I, Hume says that he means to advance knowledge of human nature, including the needs and purposes that empirical study shows to be common. In fact, “human nature” so conceived

292

Sharon R. Krause

“is the only science of man” (T 273). So he understood human nature empirically, as a collection of common needs and purposes. These concerns shape our responses to the world and thereby provide shared grounds for moral feeling and moral standards, even across time and in culturally diverse contexts (T 183, 287, 318, 469, 547 n. 1, 619).11 He insists, for example, that domestic and civil slavery “trample upon human nature,” and this provides grounds for disapproving of these practices.12 Conversely, qualities such as friendship, generosity, and public spirit are widely esteemed because they reflect basic human needs and desires.13 Human nature properly conceived is a source of normativity and provides grounds for moral standards. It is true that appeals to human nature cannot solve every moral or political dilemma. There will be questions for which its guidance is ultimately indeterminate. Human nature enables us to rule out some practices and approve of others, but it allows for diversity across a significant range of practices (T 533).14 So Hume’s appeal to human nature as a moral guide is an appeal to common human sentiments. When filtered through the generalized standpoint and consistent with human nature, sentiments are intrinsically normative for Hume.15 There is no external authority that legitimately overrides the properly structured (i.e., impersonal) claims of human sentiment. Hume also insists that “no action can be requir’d of us as our duty, unless there be implanted in human nature some actuating passion or motive, capable of producing the action,” and this motive “cannot be the sense of duty itself” (T 518).16 Volition is based in desire. Although not itself one of the passions, the will arises from them, in particular from the “direct” passions of desire and aversion (T 399). Thus Hume holds that “the will exerts itself, when either the good or the absence of the evil may be attain’d from any action of the mind or the body” (T 439).17 The passions of desire and aversion do interact with reason in the generation of volition. Although Hume famously insists that “reason alone can never produce any action or give rise to volition” (T 414), in combination with desire it plays a very important role. In most cases, desires themselves are shaped by ideas and by reason-inflected custom or social practice. The chief activating springs of human action may be the prospects of pleasure and pain (T 574), but among human beings pleasure and pain are interpreted in light of ideas and social practices. These reason-inflected, socially shaped interpretations are key constituents of desire. Reason also can help us find the best means to fulfilling our desires and avoiding our aversions. What reason cannot do is motivate action in the absence of any mediating desire or aversion.18 Insofar as moral obligations are capable of motivating action, then, they must connect up with desires that point in the same direction as these obligations. The purpose of this condition is to undercut the supposed obligation to obey divine (and other) commands requiring self-abnegation.19 It expresses the conviction

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

293

that only moral standards answering to common human concerns could be normative for us. It also nullifies what Hume referred to as the “whole train of monkish virtues” that “stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper” (E 108). By tying moral obligation to common desires, Hume means to humanize morality. This effort involves establishing human concerns, rather than divine command or an invisible set of higher ends, as the source of moral duty. It complements the demystification of moral standards. Morality is not a supernatural phenomenon, and it need not “stupefy the understanding”; it is a human artifact that grows out of and answers to familiar needs and purposes. As such, it is a regular part of human experience and accessible to the human understanding. This humanized morality also is intended to be more humane. It is less austere than the “monkish virtues,” which oppose common desires and thereby either render themselves impotent or “harden the heart.” The latter effect results from supplanting common desires with illusory ones that are grounded in abstract (and superstitious) beliefs about heavenly rewards and transcendent ideals. As we have seen, the pursuit of such ends results not only in self-abnegation but insensitivity to the suffering of others, engendering cruelty in society and enthusiasm in politics. Moral obligations on this account matter only because they matter to us—as a function of common desires—and not because they occupy a position of intrinsic worthiness in some cosmic order of things.20 The benefits of morality as a means for regulating social interaction are better realized when morality is viewed without the illusions that so often accompany it.21 The purpose of morality is simply to make human lives go better. Moral absolutists and ideological extremists obstruct this purpose for themselves as well as for others by undermining the faculty of sympathy, the predictability of human action, and the virtue of humanity. This conviction animates Hume’s whole project, as it helps explain and justify his new moral science. Demystifying morality should take the wind from the sails of absolutists and undercut the inspiration for their extremist ambitions. Hume’s project of demystification also draws support from his account of what it means to be a moral agent. This account shows that moral agency is shot through with necessity rather than free, and is grounded in the settled dispositions and established desires that constitute one’s character. Hume maintains that human actions are as “necessary” as the motions of matter. He defines necessity as the concept we invoke when we “conclude one body or action to be the infallible cause of another” (T 400). It refers to a perceived “constant union” of objects and an “inference of the mind” regarding the nature of their connection (T 400). Hume reminds us (as established in book I of the Treatise) that it is “not by any insight into the essence of bodies” that we discover this connection but rather through “a determination of the mind to pass from one object to its usual attendant, and

294

Sharon R. Krause

infer the existence of one from that of the other” (T 400). Human actions are as necessary in this sense as are the motions of matter because we commonly perceive in them regularities or patterns of constant conjunction. “There is a general course of nature in human actions,” Hume says, “as well as in the operations of the sun and the climate,” and “this uniformity forms the very essence of necessity” (T 403). He does not claim that the actions of human beings and physical objects are caused by the same things, only that all actions are caused, and causality implies necessity. The causes of human actions are to be found in the motives of agents. The “union betwixt motives and actions has the same constancy,” Hume insists, “as that in any natural operations” (T 404, 406). Consequently, “its influence on the understanding is also the same, in determining us to infer the existence of one from that of the other” (T 404).22 To deny the necessary relation between motives and actions would be to deny that human actions are caused at all, which would be to attribute them all to chance (T 407). Yet the existence of social order with its complex system of threats and incentives speaks against the rule of chance. As Hume puts it, ’Tis indeed certain, that as all human laws are founded on rewards and punishments, ’tis suppos’d as a fundamental principle, that these motives have an influence on the mind. . . . We may give to this influence what name we please; but as ’tis usually conjoin’d with the action, common sense requires it shou’d be esteem’d a cause, and be look’d upon as an instance of that necessity, which I wou’d establish. (T 410)

In employing threats and incentives to affect human action we implicitly acknowledge the patterns of constant conjunction that constitute necessity. It is true that we tend to resist the notion that human actions are necessary because we feel that we are free. This feeling of freedom is based in part on a mistake about freedom’s meaning. We fail to distinguish what Hume calls “liberty of spontaneity” from what he calls “liberty of indifference” (T 407). The former is defined as freedom from physical coercion or constraint; the latter is the absence of causation. When we do not experience physical coercion we wrongly conclude that our actions are uncaused. Yet while “we feel that our actions are subject to our will on most occasions, and imagine we feel that the will itself is subject to nothing,” still “a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character,” which suggests that we are not actually as free as we feel in determining the course of our actions (T 408). Another reason why we feel freer than we are is that religious teachings on the subject of free will have generated confusion, engendering superstitious beliefs about “souls” that transcend the causal operations of the empirical world.23 So we embellish our perception of the continuity in our characters with the illusory notion of a soul, and we are even “apt to imagine something unknown and mysterious connect-

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

295

ing the parts” (T 254). Hume’s denial of free will thus debunks the traditional concept of the soul, the conduit between human beings and God. The intended effect of dissolving this superstition is to neutralize the force of divine authority in human life, further demystifying the basis of moral agency.24 To this end, Hume defines the will as “nothing but the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind” (T 399).25 There is nothing more to human agency than this. And how does one know that she has given rise to her action? One knows it only because (or to the extent that) the action is consistent with her character. Character consists in the pattern of settled dispositions and established desires that form the motivating causes of one’s actions. It is therefore character that gives the moral force to action. “If any action be either virtuous or vicious,” Hume says, “‘tis only as a sign of some quality or character. It must depend upon durable principles of the mind, which extend over the whole conduct and enter into the personal character” (T 575). Actions that do not reflect one’s character are not legitimate subjects of praise and blame; in fact, Hume says, they “are never considered in morality” at all (T 575). Although the author of such an action may be its cause, she is not to be held fully responsible for it. The implication is that one is only truly a moral agent when her actions are her own. The way actions become meaningful as instances of moral agency is by fitting them into the pattern of standing dispositions that over time constitutes a character. The actions of moral agents must be consistent with the history of their past actions and their regular habits if they are to be distinguished from random events. There is a crucial link within moral agency between responsibility and regularity, and this link suggests that to be a moral agent is to be subject to patterns of necessity rather than to be a source of spontaneous volition. Furthermore, characters are socially constituted in large part, reflecting one’s roles and one’s position in society as much as one’s personal choices. Thus “the different stations of life influence the whole fabric” of character, including a person’s “sentiments, actions, and manners” (T 402).26 Those of a day laborer, Hume says, will be “different from those of a man of quality,” with the differences reflecting the different demands and activities associated with each role (T 402). Similarly, “a soldier and a priest are different characters, in all nations, and all ages.”27 The differences between them are “founded on circumstances, whose operation is eternal and unalterable.”28 In fact, Hume insists that “many of those qualities, which all moralists, especially the ancients, comprehend under the title of moral virtues, are equally involuntary and necessary. . . . Of this nature are constancy, fortitude, magnanimity; and, in short, all the qualities which form the great man” (T 608). It is true that Hume makes a place for moral reflexivity. A

296

Sharon R. Krause

good man can bear his own survey, as we have seen. And Hume suggests that by means of such survey one is capable of improving one’s character, should it be found wanting (T 620; E 119).29 Yet the character that undergirds moral agency is not primarily the product of individual choice any more than it is the product of an immaterial soul. So while it matters that one’s action is one’s own, what makes an action one’s own is not personal choice, or uncaused causality, or the transcendence of external influence. Seeing moral agency in this way should moderate our expectations of it— and of ourselves as moral agents. Freed from the illusions of spontaneous volition and the immaterial soul, we can turn to the more prosaic (and more predictable) needs of the body and of social life, to our established desires and settled dispositions, as guides for moral and political action. In short, reconceiving moral agency in terms of consistency with one’s existing character should encourage regularity and predictability in human action. So there are two aspects to the demystification of moral agency in Hume. First, it involves debunking the sources of normativity. Nothing more elevated than common human sentiments grounds our standards of right and wrong, the standards that inspire and guide moral action. Secondly, demystifying moral agency involves showing human action to be embedded in patterns of necessity. Hume defines moral agency in terms of consistency and predictability rather than uncaused causality. Agency exists to the extent that one’s action fits into the distinctive set of customary dispositions and desires that constitute one’s character.30 It is reasonable to think that if most of us came to see ourselves as Hume depicts us, enthusiasm would have little hold on us. Regularity and moderation would be the rule. And regularity and moderation are good for liberty. Or are they? Hume’s History should make us wonder.

POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE VALUE OF ENTHUSIASM Hume was a great advocate of political liberty, which he called “the perfection of civil society”31 and contrasted with the “evil” of “subjection and slavery.”32 On the whole, he preferred some form of republican government, or “commonwealth,” to monarchy. Yet like many others in the eighteenth century, he was critical of the direct democracy of ancient Greece and Rome. He emphasized instead the importance of representation not only as a check on arbitrary authority but also as a means of establishing distance between government and the governed. “The more the master is removed from us in place and rank,” he says, “the greater liberty we enjoy” because “the less our actions are inspected and controlled.”33 Political liberty, then, is found in freedom from arbitrary and intrusive power rather than in direct civic engagement.34 Yet Hume recognized that the preservation of liberty via

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

297

limited government periodically requires strong exertions of agency on the part of citizens or subjects, specifically acts of civil resistance to political authority that oversteps its legitimate bounds.35 It is true that he was reluctant to endorse the natural right to resistance because he thought it eroded respect for the authority needed to secure peace.36 The authority of government, which is established “to restrain the fury and injustice of the people,” is founded on opinion and therefore dependent on the reverence of its subjects (H 5.544). The “doctrine of resistance” threatens this reverence. Consequently, “obedience ought alone to be inculcated,” and the fact that legitimate exceptions to this rule exist is something that “ought seldom or never to be mentioned in popular reasonings and discourses” (H 5.544). At the same time, Hume made allowances “for resistance in the more flagrant instances of tyranny and oppression,” insisting that under such circumstances “we may resist the more violent effects of supreme power, without any crime or injustice” (T 552).37 In fact, Hume’s History makes clear that the English constitution was markedly improved over time by numerous acts of resistance (even rebellion), many of which were themselves quite violent (H 4.355).38 So although he insisted that “speculative reasoners” should keep a “cautious silence” with regard to the doctrine of resistance (H 5.544), to keep too quiet about it would be to disable forms of political action that Hume saw as crucial to liberty. Indeed, elsewhere he praises the “bold and ambitious tempers” that rise to defend civil liberty against the abuse of power.39 On this basis he compares favorably the effects of “enthusiasm,” which he associates with the Puritans, to those of “superstition,” which he connects to Catholicism. Superstition consists in the fear of “unknown evils . . . from unknown agents,” issuing in a “blind and terrified credulity.”40 It comes naturally to human beings because “the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions,”41 but it “renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery,”42 a practice that “trample[s] upon human nature.”43 Superstitious persons make themselves dependent on the authority of others, and they tend to be too conciliatory in the face of this authority, not only the authority of priests but eventually that of the magistrate as well.44 Superstition is therefore “an enemy to civil liberty.”45 By contrast, enthusiasm grows out of an “unaccountable elevation and presumption, arising from prosperous success, from luxuriant health, from strong spirits, or from a bold and confident disposition.”46 Like superstition, it is based on ignorance and connected to religious belief, but its effects are different. Instead of slavery, it gives rise to forceful exertions of agency. The enthusiast acts, often with a fury “like that of thunder and tempest.”47 This fury, which is “naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty,” frequently issues in resistance to encroaching power. Disruptive as it may be, this feature of enthusiasm makes it “a friend” to civil liberty.48

298

Sharon R. Krause

The connection between religious enthusiasm and civil liberty stems partly from Protestant theology.49 The doctrine of the individual’s direct access to God generates “a contempt of authority” (H 5.68, 5.260) that comes to be directed not only at priests but also at princes. As Hume puts it, the same “lofty pretensions, which attended them in their familiar addresses to their Maker, . . . induced them to use the utmost freedoms with their earthly sovereign” (H 5.10-11). Parliamentary attacks on the authority of the crown throughout the seventeenth century reflected the dominant role played within the Commons by this feature of Puritan theology. It gave rise to more individual acts of resistance as well. Hume reports that Quakers, when brought before a magistrate, had a tendency to treat the magistrate “with the same familiarity as if he had been their equal” (H 6.144). In part, too, the “sparks of enthusiastic fire” are kindled by the emboldening belief that God is on one’s side. Lower natures that are “backed by higher, encrease in courage and strength.” Consequently, “man, being backed with Omnipotency, is a kind of omnipotent creature” (H 5.214). Belief in a supernatural spirit supports individual agency in a way that “the ordinary state of humanity, freed from the illusions of passion, is unable to sustain” (H 6.144). And even if based on illusions, fortitude in the face of pain and persecution begets “compassion, admiration, and esteem” in the hearts of impartial observers (H 6.144). Another reason for the power of religious enthusiasm as a source of political agency is its disregard for self-interest. The motive of interest does animate human action, of course, and Hume thinks it has a legitimate and important role to play in politics. The whole point of justice, as he conceives it, is to serve individual interests; and adherence to just laws and political authorities is grounded largely (although not entirely) in self-interest. Moreover, as a general matter, Hume much prefers parties actuated by interest to those actuated by principle. The former are more predictable in their behavior and on the whole more moderate. He champions commerce in part because of its moderating effects, via the motive of self-interest it fosters.50 In this respect, Hume’s approval of the prosaic character of the bourgeoisie goes together with his theory of moral sentiment, which similarly reigns in human aspirations. Self-interest tends toward moderation because it does not typically give rise to risky and difficult forms of action. Locke’s reflections on the natural right to civil resistance are instructive here. Even when armed with the natural right to resist, Locke insists, a politically abused people will be slow to do so. Civil resistance always is a risky business, and potential rebels reasonably fear that their resistance “will be only to their own just ruine and perdition.”51 It may be in the people’s interest to correct (or unseat) a government that regularly compromises their interests, but the act of doing so puts their interests, including their lives, in jeop-

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

299

ardy.52 For this reason, self-interest may not be sufficient to motivate the defense of liberty reliably. Hume clearly saw self-interest as limited in this way. For instance, although certain precedents established by Charles I, “if patiently submitted to,” would have ended in “a total disuse of parliaments, and in the establishment of arbitrary authority,” most Englishmen were nonplussed by these precedents early in Charles’s reign. Focused primarily on their interests in security and prosperity, they had much to lose by contesting the actions of the crown. In order for the people to become engaged in resistance to established government, Hume says, “some striking motive” beyond interest was required (H 5.250). Religious enthusiasm provides such a motive because it points the enthusiast to ends that rise above or go beyond the interests potentially sacrificed in the act of resistance. The enthusiast’s aspirations cause him to “disregard all motives of human prudence” (H 5.80) and to forget the constraining “regard to ease, safety, and interest” (H 5.380). He has his eye on something “too sacred to be yielded up to the temporal interests or safety of kingdoms”—or those of individuals (H 5.427). Enthusiasm liberates political agency from the restraints of safe and predictable bourgeois satisfactions. For this reason the English under a later monarch, James II, would have “disposed of themselves to resign their liberties, had he not . . . made an attempt on their religion” (H 6.470). The spirit of liberty in England therefore spread with the rising influence of the Puritans in politics and society. Again and again in Hume’s History, the Puritans turn out to be the benefactors of English liberty.53 Beginning under Elizabeth, whose authority was relatively absolute when compared with that of later British monarchs, the “precious spark of liberty” was kindled and preserved “by the Puritans alone.” Indeed, although the Puritan principles are “frivolous” and their habits “ridiculous,” the English “owe the whole freedom of their constitution” to the enthusiastic political actions of this sect (H 4.145–46). It was their “restless, encroaching spirit” that weakened the Stuarts, that gave rise to civil war, republicanism, and tyranny, but that finally, through the settlement of 1688, established the English constitution on “fixed principles of liberty” (H 5.23, 43; 6.530).54 Enthusiasm enlivens human agency, and agency is good for liberty. Human agency also has intrinsic value. Hume indicates that governments that are “too steady and uniform” tend to “abate the active powers of men; depress courage, invention, and genius; and produce an universal lethargy in the people” (H 6.531, 530). Agency as the capacity that instantiates “the active powers of men” is an end in itself as well as a means to political liberty. And agency is “abated” by political authority that is too “steady and uniform.” So while enthusiasm may be politically disruptive, Hume suggests that a certain measure of disruption is as good for the individual as it is for the polity.

300

Sharon R. Krause

The problem, of course, is that the right measure of disruption is difficult to define, and once enthusiasm is in play the disruptions it generates can be difficult to contain. During England’s republican period, many people were “so intoxicated with their [own] saintly character” that “all professions, oaths, laws, and engagements had, in great measure, lost their influence over them” (H 6.4). Because convictions about divine sanction are not empirically verifiable, they can be deployed to justify literally anything. Likewise, Cromwell’s parliament, initially subservient to him but filled with enthusiasts, gradually “began to pretend power from the Lord, and to insist already on their divine commission”—at which point Cromwell lost control of it (H 6.63). There is no possibility of principled constraint on moral and political agency that is “directed toward an infinite and supernatural object” (H 5.441). This difficulty explains why Hume often treats the effects of enthusiasm as no less “pernicious” than those of superstition.55 To limit the disruptive effects of enthusiastic political agency, it is necessary to undercut the sources of enthusiasm that sustain it, and Hume attempts to do so, as we have seen, by means of his moral science. Yet even as he works to undermine enthusiasm, he nevertheless recognizes its potential political value.56 Hume’s mixed feelings about the political effects of enthusiasm, which both serves and threatens English liberty, register a deep ambivalence about human agency more generally. The demystification of morality effectively collapses the distinction between obligations and human interests, rescinding the special status of the former. Once we recognize that moral standards have no special standing, it is reasonable to think (with Hume) that their galvanizing effect on the spirits of extremists will tend to dissolve. As Hume put it in a letter to a friend, “where you pull off the Skin, & display all the minute Parts, there appears something trivial, even in the noblest Attitudes & most vigorous Actions: Nor can you ever render the object graceful or engaging but by the cloathing the Parts again with Skin & Flesh, & presenting only their bare Outside.”57 Yet the moderating effects of Hume’s moral anatomy may not be altogether salutary. The moderation that follows from the demystification of moral agency also has a cost. For political agency— especially the periodic acts of political resistance that protect liberty against encroaching power—often is catalyzed by a feeling for the special status of morality’s demands. This ostensibly special status can give moral convictions a valuable forcefulness in generating action. Consequently, the desire to serve what are thought to be the special claims of morality has always been a powerful source of social criticism and political reform. Think of Martin Luther’s, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” Closer to home, one might recall Lincoln’s insistence that civil war and emancipation were acts made necessary by the distinctive demands of moral principle. Likewise, Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly believed he was answering to a higher moral

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

301

authority in initiating resistance to racial segregation. These men were not exactly enthusiasts in Hume’s sense of the word. They were motivated by prudential as well as principled concerns, and no one could call them frenzied. Yet they were unquestionably inspired by an appreciation for the special moral status of the causes they served. Thus there is reason to think that the role of enthusiasm in establishing political liberty in England was not an isolated case but reflects a deeper truth about the sources of human agency. Hume himself did not pursue this line of thought, but his analysis opens the door to it. The question is whether strong exertions of moral agency in politics, such as those of Lincoln and King, could survive the demystification of morality that Hume recommends. The fact that Hume’s moral science may undercut the sources of moral agency is ironic because one of his objectives was to make moral agency more reliable. Hume intended his conceptual connection between normative standards and psychological desires as a corrective to what he called the “abstract theory of morals” adopted by the rationalist philosophers popular in his day.58 The rationalist approach, he said, “excludes all sentiment, and pretends to found everything on reason.” It was consequently bound to be impotent, Hume thought, since reason could have no influence on conduct unless accompanied by some sentiment of desire or aversion (E 4, 30, n. 1). He also believed there was little hope of engaging most people to “a practice which we confess full of austerity and rigor,” as a sentiment-free model of moral obligation inevitably would be (E 119). He wanted a moral theory that would be “more persuasive in its exhortations” (T 621). This would require making moral duty attractive by giving standards of right a footing in common human concerns. It was partly with this end in view that Hume insisted that moral standards and obligations grow out of the same stock of sentiments that regularly animate human beings to act. His sentiment-based model of moral obligation thus reflects his ambition to overcome what he saw as the motivational gap between moral duty and moral action attendant on philosophical rationalism. The anatomy of morals that he offers generates a “system of ethics” that he hopes will “help us to form a just notion of the happiness, as well as the dignity of virtue, and may interest every principle of our nature in the embracing and cherishing of that noble quality” (T 618, 620). Yet the contrary effects of his moral anatomy are real. To the extent that it undercuts the feeling of the distinctive status (and force) of moral obligations, grounding moral agency in common sentiments may undermine rather than support the reliability of moral action.59 The demystification of moral agency raises a phenomenological difficulty as well. The tendency to regard certain kinds of obligations and ends as having special worth that is of a higher order than the utility associated with interests, and to see ourselves as being especially worthy when we act on such

302

Sharon R. Krause

obligations, seems to be a common feature of the human experience. Hume acknowledges as much in the distinction he draws in his moral writings between the standard of usefulness and the standard of agreeableness. He calls them different “species of merit,” and insists that “no views of utility or of future beneficial consequences enter into [the latter] sentiment” (E 97). The category of the agreeable reflects the fact there are things we value simply as ends in themselves. Considerations of utility comprise an important dimension of morality but not the whole of it, for there is also an irreducibly non-consequentialist component in moral life. Moreover, Hume often uses the language of nobility to characterize the agreeable. Good character constitutes “a great excellency” and derives its merit “from the noble elevation of its sentiment, or its immediate agreeableness to its possessor” (E 102f). The “generous spirit and self-value” associated with good character reflect “true dignity and elevation of mind, which is so great an ornament in any character” (E 103). Courage, too, has a “peculiar luster” (E 90) and “a grandeur” (E 92) that “it derives wholly from itself, and from that noble elevation inseparable from it” (E 90). Hume’s characterization of the agreeable suggests that moral agency embodies an aspiration to what is noble and not only a response to common human sentiments.60 This aspiration sits uneasily with the demystification of moral agency. To debunk it is not only to undercut important sources of civil resistance and social criticism, but also to be false to the facts of who we are. Finally, it is worth noting that the actions of enthusiasts frequently break with what Hume understood as the necessity that constitutes one’s character, or the behavioral patterns that describe what one has always (or normally) done in the past. Enthusiastic actions often depart from what one has usually done, or what one regularly does. This was true even of Lincoln and King. No one could have predicted in advance that King would lead the civil rights movement or that Lincoln would wage a civil war and emancipate the slaves.61 The agency of enthusiasts has something of the quality that Hannah Arendt called “natality.”62 It manifests a new beginning, asserts itself against the “automatic” processes of nature and civilization—and even, we could add, of one’s own character.63 For Arendt, exertions of human agency involve “interruptions of some natural series of events, of some automatic process, in whose context they constitute the wholly unexpected.”64 They demonstrate humankind’s “sheer capacity to begin” because they imply a departure from what is given or what has been. In this respect, the actions of enthusiasts pose a challenge to Hume’s idea that moral agency is grounded in the necessary or regular behavioral patterns that constitute character. In fact, when discussing the Gunpowder Plot of 1604–5, Hume himself remarks that the religious zeal of the conspirators generated action that was out of keeping with their usual characters:

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

303

Before that audacious attempt, their conduct seems, in general, to be liable to no reproach. . . . It was bigotted zeal alone, the most absurd of prejudices masqued with reason, which seduced them into measures, that were fatal to themselves, and had so nearly proved fatal to their country (H 5.31).65

The conspirators’ action broke dramatically with the “necessary” progress of their personal narratives up to that point. In fact, Hume emphasizes that these men were highly respected for the soundness and regularity of their dispositions.66 Their enthusiasm generated forceful exertions of moral agency precisely by departing from the regular operations of their characters. Indeed, the unpredictability of enthusiastic actions is one reason why they made Hume so nervous. Enthusiasts are irregular in their actions but they are very much moral agents; Hume holds them responsible for their actions, and so would we. These considerations call into question the association between moral agency and the regularity of character. Although there is surely a connection between character and agency, forceful exertions of agency sometimes disrupt this connection. There is even reason to think that one’s actions may generate as much as reflect one’s character. Aristotle depicts the habituation that inculcates moral virtue and develops moral character in just this way. One becomes courageous by doing courageous deeds, moderate by acting moderately, truthful by telling the truth, and so on.67 Seen in this light, moral agency is a process of self-cultivation, albeit one that is neither solitary nor fully intentional. As character is being formed, a process that ends only in death, every action potentially marks a new beginning in the generation of one’s character. This process is itself unpredictable, for we can know with certainty neither where our actions will take us nor who we might become as a result of them. All this suggests that there may be something internally disruptive about moral agency for the agent herself, and hence that the strict association between moral agency and constancy of character needs to be rethought. Hume may be right to think that most of the time we are better off if we reject morality’s claim to a special status, if we disabuse ourselves of the myths of free will and the immaterial soul, if we aim for regularity in our actions rather than “natality,” and if we seek to satisfy common desires instead of aspire to more noble ends. These practices are likely to make us— and our societies—less vulnerable to the extremist exertions of agency that jeopardize civil order and political liberty. Yet in reducing our vulnerability to extremism, they may also weaken our ability to defend liberty. And they thwart the common desire to serve something that we believe is beyond and better than our interests. The rise of religious fundamentalism around the world today, and, with it, extreme forms of political agency, speaks to a lingering, perhaps irrepressible, aspiration to serve what is (believed to be) of

304

Sharon R. Krause

ultimate, not merely common, value. So while peace and political liberty may call for the demystification of moral agency that Hume attempts, it is not clear that this demystification is entirely possible. Nor is it fully desirable, even from the standpoint of political liberty itself. Hume’s ambivalence about political agency suggests that he sensed this paradox. Despite his ambivalence (or maybe because of it), we have reason to take Hume’s account of political agency seriously today. In many ways the dangers that made him ambivalent about political agency resemble our own. Like him, we worry about enthusiasm in politics, and we have good reasons to do so. The terrorism that is animated by religious fanaticism in our time poses the same kind of threat to liberty that Hume feared from enthusiasts in his own day. Then, too, enthusiastic responses to terrorism, when they assume a moral fervor of the sort brought to bear against the so-called axis of evil, threaten civil liberties at home and peace abroad. But if we worry about the political effects of enthusiasm, we also have reason to be wary of too much regularity in citizen character. Most Americans are anything but enthusiastic in politics; passivity is more the rule among us. In response to this passivity, political theorists mourn the absence of civic virtue and the loss of social capital, while political scientists remark on the declining sense of political “efficacy.”68 Civic virtue, social capital, and the sense of efficacy are not always good things, but liberal democracy can no more do without them than it can do without political agency—even, on occasion, enthusiastic agency. Can we envision inspired political action that does not make us vulnerable to the real perils of enthusiasm? Can enthusiasm be tamed, or harnessed for sound purposes, without being neutralized entirely? Perhaps Lincoln and King are instructive here. Their unusually forceful exertions of agency were guided and constrained by liberal-democratic principles (among other things). These principles justified, in publicly accessible ways, the actions they undertook. And, while Hume depicted many of the religious principles that inspired political action in his day as based in ignorance and illusion, the public principles that guided Lincoln and King were well-founded. Moreover, their actions ultimately served both liberty and justice by bringing about more equitable political institutions and social practices. Yet there was nothing tame about these men as political agents. On the contrary, they were exceptionally disruptive: people died because of what they did.69 The enthusiasm that liberal democracy needs cannot be tamed exactly, but it can be guided. And we can (and should) order our political institutions in ways that minimize the need for strong exertions of agency, thereby rendering us less dependent on enthusiasm. But it would be too much to expect that we could ever be free of enthusiasm, or even that we should be free of it. Hume was right to suggest that moral and political disruptions can be good for society, and good for the individual. In fact, de-

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

305

spite his efforts to foster moderation and his emphasis on the value of custom and the importance of stability, there is a bit (if only a bit) of the disruptive, authority-challenging enthusiast in Hume. Even today, his work disrupts our assumptions about the sources of moral value, our beliefs about the freedom of our actions, and our prejudices against enthusiasm itself. Whether the political payoff of these disruptions serves or hinders liberty among us depends on what we make of them. The paradox of political agency in Hume presses us to think beyond our settled assumptions and customary habits, and it suggests that if we do so we may find the spirit of liberty in some unexpected places.

NOTES 1. A few interpreters have discussed the ways in which features of Hume’s moral theory play out in (or stand in tension with) the History. See, for instance, John W. Danford, David Hume and the Problem of Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Duncan Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Don Herzog, Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); and Andrew Kolin, The Ethical Foundations of Hume’s Theory of Politics (New York: Peter Lang, 1992). Whereas these accounts trace the influence of Hume’s moral theory on his political views, however, the present study interprets his theory of moral sentiment—and specifically the account of moral agency it entails—in light of political considerations raised in the History. 2. It is true that Hume characterized his project in the Treatise as that of an “anatomist” of ethics rather than a “painter” of practical morality (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968], 620; hereafter references to the Treatise will appear in the text preceded by the letter “T”). He understood himself to be explaining the general basis and operations of the moral sense rather than promoting a particular set of moral virtues. At the same time, however, he clearly saw a practical purpose for his moral anatomy. He explicitly means “to establish on [its basis] a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension” (T xxiii; emphasis added). Likewise, he insists that his “abstract speculations” about the nature of morality are “subservient to practical morality;” and he hopes that they “may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortations” (T 621; original emphasis). So even though the function of the Treatise is not to inculcate a particular set of virtues, it would be wrong to think that Hume had no practical purpose in writing it. The nature of this purpose is elaborated in the course of this essay. 3. David Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 74. 4. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 74. 5. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 74.

306

Sharon R. Krause

6. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 77. 7. David Hume, History of England (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 6 vols, vol. 5.11, 68. Hereafter references to the History will appear in the text preceded by the letter “H.” 8. See Sharon R. Krause, Civil Passions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), ch. 3 and “Passion, Power, and Impartiality in Hume,” in Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy, ed. Rebecca Kingston and Leonard Ferry (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008), 126–44. For an especially rich discussion of Hume’s theory of moral sentiment more generally, see Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). 9. On the reflexivity within moral sentiment, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 97–100. Penelhum also emphasizes that “intellectual considerations are as necessary for our moral decisions as sentiment is,” but that “the core of Hume’s value theory is that [reason] cannot be enough.” See Terence Penelhum, David Hume: An Introduction to His Philosophical System (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1992), 137. 10. For a more extended discussion of human nature as a standard in Hume, see Krause, Civil Passions, 89–95, on which this paragraph draws. 11. See also Hume, An Enquiry into the Principles of Morals (LaSalle: Open Court, 1966), 47. Hereafter references to the Enquiry will appear in the text with the page number preceded by the letter “E.” On Hume’s appeal to human nature, see Krause, “Passion, Power, and Impartiality in Hume,” on which this paragraph draws. 12. Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, 383. 13. See John W. Danford, David Hume and the Problem of Reason, 104. 14. See Richard H. Dees, “Hume and the Contexts of Politics,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (2) (April 1992): 231. In “A Dialogue,” for example, Hume reflected on the differences between French and Greek relations between the sexes, saying that “our neighbours, it seems, have resolved to sacrifice some of the domestic to the sociable pleasures; and to prefer ease, freedom, and an open commerce, to a strict fidelity and constancy” in the manner of the Greeks. “These ends,” he continues, “are both good, and are somewhat difficult to reconcile.” He is not particularly concerned “if the customs of nations incline too much, sometimes to the one side, sometimes to the other” (Hume, “A Dialogue” in David Hume: Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. P. H. Nidditch [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998], 335). 15. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65f. 16. As Árdal puts it, for Hume a virtue whose characteristic motive is the sense of duty would be impossible. Páll S. Árdal, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 187. Note that this view requires only that obligations be consistent with some motive “implanted in human nature” as a general matter. In any particular case, an individual may have countervailing motives, and may not even be fully aware of the motive that underwrites the relevant obligation. What matters is that a person deliberating in good faith could be brought to see and to feel the force of this motive on reflection. 17. As Darwall points out, the will always aims at some conception of the good. Stephen Darwall, “Motive and Obligation in Hume’s Ethics,” Nous 27 (4) (1993): 418.

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

307

18. Bricke thus maintains that desire has “a certain structural priority over belief” in generating actions. John Bricke, Mind and Morality: An Examination of Hume’s Moral Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 17. To be sure, there is a sense in which reason can stimulate new desires and hence affect volition. It can make us aware of the presence of objects that, given our current desires, we have a “reason” to desire. But the new desire could not be generated on the basis of any process of reasoning that is fully independent of desire; what justifies it is its connection to our existing desires. 19. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 56. 20. Jacqueline Taylor makes a similar point in “Hume and the Reality of Value” in Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 108. 21. J. L. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory (London: Routledge, 1980), 156. 22. For further discussion of the causal relationship between motives and human action in Hume, see Bricke, Mind and Morality, 238; and Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge, 2000), 142. 23. From the Christian perspective, of course, to deny the free will of the soul (in the sense of Hume’s liberty of indifference) would be to make God the cause of sin and the source of evil in the world. Consequently, much was at stake for the Church in this question. It is no surprise that these views incited fierce opposition. For a detailed account of clerical opposition to Hume, see E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), especially 158–60, 230, 248–49, 325, and 336–55. 24. This purpose lies behind Hume’s offhanded equation of body and soul in a discussion of the origin of the passions: “Bodily pains and pleasures are the source of many passions, both when felt and consider’d by the mind; but arise originally in the soul, or in the body, whichever you please to call it, without any preceding thought or perception” (T 276; emphasis added). 25. Valuable discussion of Hume’s definition of the will can be found in R. F. Stalley, “The Will in Hume’s Treatise,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1) (January 1986): 41–53; John Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature (London: Methuen, 1934), 101–4; Norman Kemp-Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan, 1941), 435–39; and Árdal, Reason and Value, 80–85, 98. 26. As Nicholas Capaldi says, the self in Hume “is revealed through its social roles.” Capaldi, “Hume as Social Scientist,” in David Hume: Critical Assessments, ed. Stanley Tweyman (New York: Routledge, 1995), 14. 27. Hume, “Of National Characters,” Essays, 198. 28. Hume, “Of National Characters,” Essays, 198. 29. See also, Hume, “The Skeptic,” Essays, 170. 30. These two aspects of the demystification of moral agency reflect two dimensions of moral agency itself. The first is moral agency as action that is morally motivated, or motivated by explicitly moral concerns; the second is action that is morally criticizable, or action for which one may be held morally responsible (whatever the character of one’s motivation may have been). 31. Hume, “Of the Origin of Government,” Essays, 41. 32. Hume, “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” Essays, 64f. For discussion of the conditions of liberty in Hume, see Capaldi, “The Preservation of Liberty,” in Liberty in

308

Sharon R. Krause

Hume’s History of England, ed. Nicholas Capaldi and Donald W. Livingston (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 196. 33. Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, 383. 34. See Herzog, Justification without Foundations, 194. 35. Forbes notes that, according to Hume, political liberty is apt to be neglected by indolence as well as ignorance. Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, 282, 320. 36. Hume, “Of Passive Obedience,” Essays, 491. On Hume’s objections to the natural right to civil resistance, and to social contract theory more generally, see Stephen Buckle and Dario Castiglione, “Hume’s Critique of the Contract Theory,” History of Political Thought 12 (3) (Autumn 1991): 457–80. As Geoffrey Marshall points out, Hume connected civil resistance in the form of popular protest to religious enthusiasm. Marshall, “David Hume and Political Skepticism,” Philosophical Quarterly 4 (16) (1954): 248. 37. There is some evidence that Hume’s views on civil resistance changed over time in response to political events. Whereas in the Treatise he calls the doctrine of passive obedience “an absurdity” and defends the importance of civil resistance, in a later essay on the same topic he takes a more cautious tone. Eugene Miller suggests that the change reflects Hume’s response to the Jacobite rising of 1745, and that at this later date he was concerned “to say nothing that would discredit the salutary principle of obedience to law” (Miller, Hume’s Essays, editor’s note 1, 488f). 38. For discussion of how the sometimes unruly behavior of the Puritans facilitated the rise of liberty in England, see Eugene F. Miller, “Hume on Liberty in the Successive English Constitutions,” in Liberty in Hume’s History of England, ed. Capaldi and Livingston, 53–104. Herzog also comments on the fact that “Hume owes his cherished liberty to religious fanatics,” calling it “the consummate irony of Hume’s career.” Herzog, Justification without Foundations, 199. 39. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 78. 40. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 73f 41. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 73. 42. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 78. 43. Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, 383. 44. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 78. Hume does acknowledge that superstition can issue in violent action as well as passivity. His harrowing account of the Irish insurrection of 1641 offers an illustration. During the uprising, the English living in Ireland were “marked out by the priests for slaughter” and subjected to “all the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise.” This shock to humanity “arose from an enraged superstition.” Hume, History, 5.343, 342. 45. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 78. 46. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 74. 47. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 77. 48. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 78. 49. See Miller, “Hume on Liberty in the Successive English Constitutions,” 86. 50. Commerce animates industry because it “rouses men from their indolence; and presenting . . . objects of luxury, which they never before dreamed of, raises in them a desire of a more splendid way of life than what their ancestors enjoyed” (Hume, “Of Commerce,” Essays, 264). This taste for worldly possessions is to be welcomed, Hume thinks. Tradesmen and merchants, in view of their attachment to

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

309

their property, “are the best and firmest basis of public liberty.” They “covet equal laws, which may secure their property,” and which “preserve them from monarchical as well as aristocratical tyranny.” Hence the House of Commons “is the support of our popular government; and all the world acknowledges, that it owed its chief influence and consideration to the encrease of commerce, which threw such a balance of property into the hands of the commons” (Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Essays, 278). Moreover, the refinement of pleasures that comes with commerce makes men more “sociable,” leads to an “encrease of humanity,” and decreases the likelihood that they will “indulge in excesses of any kind” (Hume, “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Essays, 271). See also Danford, “Hume’s History and Economic Development,” in Liberty in Hume’s History of England, 188f. 51. Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 196), para. 230, page 417–18. 52. There is good reason to think that Locke’s comments are at least partly intended to be rhetorical, to play down the potentially disruptive effects of the doctrine of the natural right to resistance, but the logic of self-interest that he lays out here is nevertheless sound. 53. See Miller, “Hume on Liberty in the Successive English Constitutions,” 80–101. 54. I do not mean to suggest that Hume simply favored the Puritan cause in the English Civil War, or that his historical analysis should be read as a piece of Whiggish partisanship. On the contrary, his view is one of considered ambivalence. In some respects, his mixed responses to the English Civil War parallel the view that Kant would later take of the French Revolution, which regarded the revolutionaries as a largely roguish element that had managed to produce a significant advance in liberty somewhat despite themselves. 55. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” Essays, 73. For discussion of superstition and enthusiasm in Hume’s political writings, see Andrew Sabl, “When Bad Things Happen from Good People (and Vice-Versa): Hume’s Political Ethics of Revolution,” Polity 35 (1) (Fall 2002): 73–92; and Knud Haakonsen, “The Structure of Hume’s Political Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially 186. 56. This paradox bears some affinity to what Sabl evocatively calls “the tragedy of innovation,” although his focus is on questions of knowledge and judgment in Hume rather than agency (see Andrew Sabl, “When Bad Things Happen from Good People,” 82). Yet if my interpretation is correct, Hume may have been somewhat more mixed in his assessment of zealous political action than Sabl indicates, such that the tensions surrounding it constitute a paradox but not necessarily a tragedy. 57. Hume, Letter of 17 September 1739, in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), vol. I, p. 32–33. 58. Hume had in mind thinkers such as Samuel Clarke and Ralph Cudworth, as well as Nicholas Malebranche. See David Fate Norton, “Hume, Human Nature, and the Foundations of Morality,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 152–53; Penelhum, David Hume, 145; and Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory, vii. 59. True, Hume tells us at the end of Treatise, book I that philosophical understanding need not disrupt the habits of common life. The skeptical philosopher normally suspends his disbelief for the purpose of living decently and enjoying life.

310

Sharon R. Krause

Custom and habit provide support for this practice. Perhaps, then, Hume’s demystification of moral agency need not undermine the reliability of moral action. Yet his insistence on the practical implications of his “system of ethics” suggests that he does intend for his demystification project to actually affect how people act. His system is supposed to both enliven moral agency (as against the rationalists) and moderate it (as against the fanatics). The theory of moral value he lays out is not something that can be left behind in the philosopher’s study, then. It is meant to infuse practical life. To the extent that it does so, however, it runs the risk of trivializing the ends that animate the “noblest attitudes and most vigorous actions,” thereby leaving political freedom insufficiently protected. 60. For further discussion of the category of the agreeable in Hume, see Sharon R. Krause, “Hume and the (False) Luster of Justice,” Political Theory 32 (5) (October 2004): 628–55. 61. When King was elected president of the Montgomery bus boycott organization in December 1955 he was still searching for his calling, and considering accepting a job at Dillard University in New Orleans, with the intention of pursuing a “life in the academy.” (See Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 [New York: Touchstone, 1988], 123–24.) The fact that King was chosen to lead the boycott was as much a function of chance and politics as a reflection on his character. According to Branch, King was nominated for the position by Rufus Lewis in a play to prevent E. D. Nixon from assuming leadership. After King was nominated, “there was hesitation and some discussion, but in the end no one else was nominated—not Nixon, nor Abernathy, nor any of the powerful senior ministers. Idealists would say afterward that King’s gifts made him the obvious choice. Realists would scoff at this, saying that King was not very well known, and that his chief asset was his lack of debts or enemies. Cynics would say that the established preachers stepped back for King only because they saw more blame and danger ahead than glory” (Branch, Parting the Waters, 137). Likewise, before being elected president, Lincoln was known among acquaintances as much for his personal ambition and political maneuvering as for the moral courage and principled conviction that he subsequently displayed. See, among others, Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice (New York: Knopf, 1998), 203f, 301, 304, 312, 315. 62. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 9. Richard H. King maintains that Arendt’s account of human agency best elucidates the activities of the civil rights movement. See King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 24. 63. “Human life, placed on the earth, is surrounded by automatic processes—by the natural processes of the earth, which, in turn, are surrounded by cosmic processes, and we ourselves are driven by similar forces insofar as we too are a part of organic nature. Our political life, moreover, . . . also takes place in the midst of processes which we call historical and which tend to become as automatic as natural or cosmic processes, although they were started by men.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 168f. 64. Arendt, The Human Condition, 168f. 65. I am in debt to Andy Sabl for drawing my attention to this passage. 66. Sir Everard Digby, for instance, “was as highly esteemed and beloved as any man in England,” and he had been “particularly honored with the good opinion of Queen Elizabeth” (H 5.31).

Frenzy, Gloom, and the Spirit of Liberty in Hume

311

67. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell: Peripatetic Press), 1103a32–1103b3. 68. See, for example, Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); and Paul R. Abramson, Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983). 69. That is, their actions set in motion events in which others died. This is true of King as well as Lincoln, despite the non-violent intentions and methods of the former.

15 Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered Steven J. Lenzner

Among the most prominent themes of Leo Strauss’s writings is the relation between philosophy and society. Strauss characteristically treats this problem from the point of view of philosophy. In his discussion of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History, however, Strauss articulates the relationship from the point of view of society.1 More precisely, Strauss treats it from the point of view of the statesman—and not just any statesman, but one of the greatest statesmen of modern times. By examining Strauss’s subchapter on Burke, I seek to contribute to a fuller understanding of Strauss’s presentation of the fundamental problem of political philosophy. I will first try to clear the way to an adequate approach by briefly discussing what the essay might be thought to be, but is not: Strauss’s thematic treatment of “conservatism.” I will then discuss the role the Burke subchapter plays within the chapter of Natural Right and History entitled “Crisis of Modern Natural Right.” In the third part I will consider the subchapter itself.2

STRAUSS’S BURKE AND THE QUESTION OF “CONSERVATISM” It is a striking fact that Strauss refuses unqualifiedly to describe Burke as a “conservative” in Natural Right and History. The question of conservatism is raised explicitly only once in the Burke subchapter (318–19): “Whereas Burke’s ‘conservatism’ is in full agreement with classical thought, his interpretation of his ‘conservatism’ prepared an approach to human affairs which is even more foreign to classical thought than the very ‘radicalism’ of the theorists of the French Revolution.” One might be inclined to regard 313

314

Steven J. Lenzner

Strauss’s decision to place “conservatism” in quotes as a simple act of historical precision. Burke never called himself a “conservative”—a term that arose only in the nineteenth century—yet Strauss did not hesitate earlier to describe Socrates as “a very conservative man as far as the ultimate practical conclusions of his political philosophy were concerned” (93).3 Why then did Strauss hesitate to use the term conservative in regard to Burke in Natural Right and History? A possible answer is that Burke did not identify the good with the old, the ancestral, or the “traditional.”4 Burke’s first words in Natural Right and History might seem to undermine this claim, for they ostensibly testify to the attraction and abiding power of “the primeval equation of the good with the ancestral.” “There is a sort of presumption against novelty,” Burke says, “drawn out of a deep consideration of human nature and human affairs, and the maxim of jurisprudence is well laid down, Vetustas pro lege semper habetur” (83).5 Burke’s presumption, however, is based on what the equation in question works to preclude, namely reflection upon nature. There is an unbridgeable gap between Burke’s “deep consideration” and the assumption “that the ancestors were absolutely superior to us” (83). Rather than identifying the good with the ancestral, Burke identified the good with the established. It is precisely because good things have their origins in questionable beginnings—i.e., in some ways the old is the opposite of the good—that Burke discouraged attempts to probe the foundations of government. Thus he does not characteristically seek to make appeals to the British equivalents of the founding fathers or “original intent.”6 Though his prescription differs radically, Burke’s diagnosis of the origins of civil society thus remind one, above all, of Machiavelli. One would not need to draw “a sacred veil” over “the beginnings of all governments” (310) were those beginnings not essentially problematic. Harvey Mansfield captures this aspect of Burke’s thought in his essay “Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics.” In a passage that would be difficult to improve, Mansfield writes: It is Machiavelli’s argument that civilization emerges from savagery by primitive acts of savagery occasionally repeated. Fine things have a nasty beginning and, by the motion of human things, a repeated necessity to return to their nasty beginning. . . . But, given this beginning, do we have to return to it? Perhaps it is possible to admit that civilization has a nasty beginning, and that human things are in motion, but then to deny that this motion forces us to return to the beginning. That is the possibility explored by Burke. He agreed with Machiavelli and Aristotle that civilization has a nasty beginning, and he agreed with Machiavelli against Aristotle that pluralism was the correct response to the motion of human affairs. But he tried to show against Machiavelli that the motion of human affairs can and must be managed without reenacting the oppression of every human founding. If Burke sustained this point, he would be entitled to “forget” his indebtedness to Machiavelli; and so would we, with a sigh of relief.7

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered

315

As Mansfield goes on to show, the theoretical innovation from which Burke sought to provide this sustenance was “prescription,” which Burke had elevated to “a great fundamental part of natural law.” It is for the reasons so well articulated by Mansfield that Strauss describes prescription—as opposed to any sort of adherence to the ancestral—as Burke’s true standard of political legitimacy.8 To sum up, it is Burke’s equation of political good with the established or prescriptive—what Strauss terms “proved beneficence” (299)—rather than with the ancestral that limits Strauss’s identification of Burke as a “conservative.”

THE ROLE OF THE BURKE SUBCHAPTER IN “THE CRISIS OF MODERN NATURAL RIGHT” Strauss’s pairing of Burke with Rousseau in “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” is perplexing. Coming on the heels of Strauss’s exposure of the Hobbesian roots of Locke’s natural right doctrine, the tenuous connection Strauss draws between Rousseau and Burke makes for something of an anticlimax. Strauss explicitly provides only one reason for their pairing, namely that each provided “one of the two most important elements in the ‘discovery’ of History” (315).9 Yet one has to wonder whether this connection is enough to justify treating the (supposed) friend and foe of the French Revolution together—a choice that seems particularly odd in light of the book’s almost complete silence on Kant and Hegel, two thinkers more typically regarded as the discoverers of History. Moreover, given that Strauss says in the chapter’s very first sentence that “the first crisis of modernity occurred in the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau” (252), the addition of Burke could even seem superfluous. Still, the crisis of modernity is not the same as the crisis of modern natural right. And it is “the ultimate outcome” of the latter to which Strauss traces the rise of historicism at the end of his first chapter (34). Could it be that Strauss linked Rousseau with Burke simply because he believed such linkage painted the best picture of historicism’s genesis?10 Perhaps so, though if this were to prove the case one would still be left with something of a puzzle for the seeming argument of Natural Right and History is that things are best understood, not by considering the manner in which they come to be, but by considering the manner in which they are (cf. 122–23). Immediately upon identifying historicism as “the ultimate outcome of the crisis of modern natural right,” however, Strauss adds that “[t]he crisis of modern natural right or of modern political philosophy could become a crisis for philosophy as such only because in the modern centuries philosophy as such had become thoroughly politicized” (34). By considering this

316

Steven J. Lenzner

sentence in the light of the “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” chapter as a whole, one can begin to see another reason justifying Strauss’s twofold treatment. Rousseau and Burke perhaps more profoundly than any other thinkers in the modern centuries lodged protest against this politicization, however much they may have unwittingly exacerbated it. One might even say that Strauss plays with another possible—and healthier—combination of their thoughts. Burke and Rousseau each supplied a partial return to classical thought that—had they been put together—would have constituted a rediscovery of classical thought: “the impression grows that Rousseau sought to restore the classical idea of philosophy” (261). Rousseau would thus provide classical philosophy, or genuine theory. Burke “may be said to have restored the older view according to which theory cannot be the sole, or the sufficient, guide of practice. He may be said to have returned to Aristotle in particular” (303). Burke would thus provide Aristotelian practical wisdom or genuine practice.11 This is not small praise. At the same time, one cannot ignore the tentative and qualified character of the restorations described by Strauss: the former is an “impression,” and the latter only “may be said.”12 One can even take this possible connection between Burke and Rousseau a step further, for Strauss pays these two thinkers the honor of employing their writings to present the most complete expression to be found in the pages of Natural Right and History of his characteristic teaching on the necessary tension between philosophy and political society. Strauss employs Rousseau to present, more or less, the “philosophic” case (255–63),13 and he employs Burke to present the case from the flip side of his characteristic point of view. Rather than providing an account of the reasons that induce philosophers to communicate exoterically, he employs Burke to provide the statesman’s perspective of the dangers that result if they fail to do so (304–11).14 We are thereby induced to discover and fill out just what is entailed in the statesman’s perspective.

A RECONSIDERATION OF “STRAUSS’S THREE BURKES” Strauss’s three-part treatment of Burke presents, as it were, three different Burkes.15 The first Burke is Strauss’s true portrait, presenting both his virtues and vices. Strauss’s second Burke is the one described in the preceding paragraph, namely the detached statesman who explores the problem of the relation between philosophy and society and who articulates it from the point of view of the latter. In the third section, Strauss paints a portrait of Burke that views him in the light of subsequent developments to which his thought, however unintentionally, helped give rise—for example, German romanticism, “the historical school,” and “existentialism.”

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered

317

Strauss does not present his first Burke using the terms one would characteristically employ to describe someone who can be said to make his living as a thinker. Burke is not portrayed “observing,” “characterizing,” “thinking,” “seeing,” and so on. Instead, from the outset Burke is presented as “taking sides.” He sides “with Cicero and with Suarez against Hobbes and against Rousseau.”16 The verbs Strauss most frequently employs in the sections are “grants,” “admits,” “denies,” and “opposes.” These are perfectly valid ways of proceeding—or acting—for a statesmen, but they are not the terms one associates with theoretical precision. They are not terms, for example, that one finds frequently employed in Strauss’s articulation of classical thought. Strauss speaks of Burke’s “career” and his animating “faith” (295). So Strauss implicitly lets us know that the treatment of Burke’s thought cannot proceed on the same level as that he accords philosophers proper. Put another way, as is fitting for his only writing devoted to a statesman, Strauss initially and provisionally treats Burke from within the horizon of the political. Yet if Strauss is provisionally willing to make allowances for theoretical imprecision—and incomplete or insufficient argumentation—in the works of a statesman, there are other aspects of Burke’s thought, or the cast of his mind, that he is less disposed to overlook. These aspects highlight Burke’s intellectual vices, which though less prominently displayed than his virtue as the attempted restorer of classical prudence, are nonetheless unmistakably present. Strauss frequently uses terms to describe Burke’s manner of proceeding that suggest a certain lack of moderation. Burke “repudiated with scorn. . . .” (295), for instance, and he “abhors the notion. . . .” (299). Moreover, whereas Strauss’s quotations of Burke in the section rarely highlight Burke’s eloquence, they do occasionally point to a certain clouding of his thought by passion. The last sentence of the section suggests that Burke’s account of theory and practice differed from the classics insofar as he traced the errors of those he opposed “less to passion than to the intrusion of the spirit of theory into the field of practice.” One might say that for Strauss, Burke not only underestimated the distorting power of passion but occasionally fell victim to it. One can see this perhaps most clearly by considering together the concluding sentences of successive paragraphs of the subchapter. Whereas paragraph 8 ends with Burke’s claim that his opinions can never lead to extremes (300), paragraph 7 ends with his “abhorrence” of the “notion” that foreign policy can be determined by exclusive regard to material interest (299, emphasis added), and paragraph 9 ends with Burke’s rather intemperate characterization of the French Revolutionists’ “dissoluteness” as “an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious, medley of pedantism and lewdness” (301). It is not an accident that the term “moderation” is not to be found in the Burke subchapter.17

318

Steven J. Lenzner

The second Burke is an “idealized” Burke—or Burke freed from the distorting powers and passions of political controversies.18 In a nice irony, Strauss presents Burke at his best as a thinker in an abstract, theoretical manner. Whereas the first section is full of proper names and events, the second section is notably free of them. Other than a few mentions of Burke himself, not a single proper name is to be found in the text of the second section.19 Moreover, the second section is wholly free of the hesitancies and qualifications that frequently occur in the first section. Compare in this regard the character of the notes: whereas the notes of the first and third sections have numerous qualifying examples and explanations, the second section consists entirely of citations from Burke bereft of any explanatory text whatsoever and without a single qualifying or accentuating “cf.,” “compare,” “see,” or “e.g.”20 The account is coherent and consistent. The treatment of Burke in the second section, in fact, has more of Strauss’s characteristic tone in Natural Right and History; and although it has many more quotations, it otherwise bears comparison with his manner of articulating, for example, the classic natural right teaching in chapter 4. Whatever the merits of this account of the second section’s formal characteristics, there remains the difficulty posed by that section’s failure to cohere with those it is sandwiched between. Those sections are messy and particular. They deal precisely with the things that the central section identifies as the province of practical wisdom, but which themselves are absent from that section: “exceptions, modifications, balances, compromises or mixtures” (307). One may even go so far as to say that the central section is not part of the essay proper. Strauss, as it were, writes it out of his own description of the essay by referring in the next section to “the preceding paragraphs” and then describing, not the immediately preceding paragraphs that make up the second section, but instead the concluding paragraphs of section one. Specifically, the first paragraph of the third part of the essay begins, “As may be inferred from the preceding paragraphs, Burke is not content with defending practical wisdom against the encroachments of theoretical science. He parts company with the Aristotelian tradition by disparaging theory and especially metaphysics” (311). Strauss then goes on to speak about Burke’s “strictures on metaphysics” (312). This would be a remarkably odd way to describe the paragraphs that constitute the second section of the subchapter (304–11) for Strauss there very deliberately presents Burke’s thought free of what he earlier in Natural Right and History had termed “Burke’s polemical overstatements” (188). When one further takes into account the manner in which the next paragraphs begins—“For the support of this contention we do not have to rely entirely on a general impression derived from Burke’s usage and the bent of his thought” (312)—it becomes clear that “the preceding paragraphs” to which Strauss refers are not the im-

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered

319

mediately preceding paragraphs but rather the paragraphs that constitute the first section.21 That section, in marked contrast to the central one, proceeds via “a general impression derived from Burke’s usage and the bent of his thought.”22 The character of the third section differs from that of the second section as much as the first does. To begin with, there is a resurgence of particularities, but with a twist. In striking contrast to the sections preceding it, this section takes Burke—or his thought—out of the realm of practice and into that of theory. If the second section is thematically devoted to the corrosive effect that theory can have upon society, then the third section may be described as being devoted to the corrosive effect that theory can have upon itself. Whereas the first two sections referred to philosophers and philosophic movements sparingly,23 the third section leaps without apparent purpose among philosophers, movements, and trends.24 Strauss no longer is concerned with what Burke can teach us about politics. Rather, he is interested in bringing forth certain tendencies of Burke’s thought that can shed light on the degeneration of modern natural right into “the historical school” and, eventually, into “existentialism.” Strauss intimates the shift of focus from the political to the theoretical or scholarly by invoking a book and its title: Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. After having almost altogether neglected that work in the essay’s first two sections, Strauss employs it at the outset of the third section to suggest that Burke’s appreciation of reason was suspect.25 And he does so prominently for the Sublime and the Beautiful is the first work of Burke’s mentioned by title in the subchapter as well as the only one mentioned in its text.26 Not only does Strauss provide the full title of the Sublime and Beautiful, he even calls attention to having done so, saying, “The very title of the inquiry reveals the ancestry of Burke’s sole theoretic effort; it is reminiscent of Locke and Burke’s acquaintance, Hume.”27 Another way in which Strauss illustrates the respective approaches of the subchapter’s three parts is by his use (and non-use) of dates. Only two dates are mentioned in the text of the Burke essay. In the first and most political section, Strauss refers to 1789 (303). The silence on dates in the central section reflects its detached and abstract character, or its aspiration to be timeless.28 And Strauss alerts one to the self-consciously “academic” character of the third section—which at a glance might appear distressingly akin to the kinds of historical studies critiqued throughout Natural Right and History— via the only date he sees fit to mention in the third section, namely 1820, the year of the recovery of Cicero’s Republic.29 Or, put another way, in the midst of criticizing Burke for unwittingly taking on the characteristics of the thought he sought to oppose, Strauss wittingly takes on the characteristics of the scholars he sought to oppose.

320

Steven J. Lenzner

CONCLUSION To clarify, the second section focuses attention on neither the true Burke, replete with both virtues and vices, nor the tradition’s Burke. The second Burke throws into relief the very problem of presenting political society’s critique of philosophy. Burke himself is no longer the focus; he is merely the medium through which Strauss explores this side of the fundamental question. It is a very un-Burkean presentation of an idealized Burke. The function of this central section is to give body to Strauss’s classic summary of, or syllogism on, the tension between philosophy and society—viz., opinion is the element of society; philosophy seeks to replace opinion by knowledge; philosophy thus willy-nilly seeks to dissolve the element of society. Rather than merely telling us, Strauss employs Burke’s words to show us how philosophy—or, more precisely, an irresponsible theory that appears in political life as philosophy30—serves to undermine practice and society. And by compelling us to tarry a while with the idealized Burke, free of vices, Strauss denies his readers the escape they naturally seek and readily find within the comforts provided by their own indignation toward, for example, those parochial Athenians assembled against the putatively innocent Socrateds. Strauss’s central Burke mirrors the true danger philosophy poses to society.

NOTES 1. All unidentified page references are to Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953). 2. This paper is in fact a reconsideration in that I have previously published an essay entitled “Strauss’s Three Burkes: The Problem of Edmund Burke in Natural Right and History” (Political Theory 29 (3) (August 1991): 364–90. At the time I was insufficiently aware of the central importance for the Burke subchapter of the problem of the relation between philosophy and society. 3. Cf. Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959) 267; henceforth to be cited as WIPP. 4. In passing, it is worth noting that given Burke’s reputation as a champion of traditionalism, it is striking how rarely he speaks of “tradition” as such. One has to look long and hard in Burke’s writings for his employment of the term. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, for example, “tradition” can be found only in a single parenthetical aside (The Works of Edmund Burke [London: Bohn, 1855], vol. 2, 293). 5. “Ancient custom is always held as law.” Jon R. Stone, comp., The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 125. 6. As for the apparent exception of Burke’s “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” see Harvey C. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1965), 167–73. In passing, it should be noted that Mansfield’s unjustly neglected study is far and away the best book on Burke. Yet it is much more

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered

321

than that: I have been told by more than one person that Strauss himself stated that he would have liked to have been that work’s author. Only an Aristophanes, Machiavelli, or Shakespeare could offer a playwright like praise. 7. Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 100. 8. And Strauss does so in the central sentences of the central paragraph of the first part of the Burke subchapter: Since the function of civil society is the satisfaction of wants, the established constitution derives its authority less from the original convention or from its origin than from its beneficent working through many generations or from its fruits. The root of legitimacy is not so much consent or contract, as proved beneficence, i.e., prescription. Only prescription, as distinguished from the original compact of “uncovenanted” savages, can reveal the wisdom of the constitution and therefore legitimate the constitution. The habits produced on the basis of the original compact, and especially the habits of virtue, are infinitely more important than the original act itself. Only prescription, as distinguished from the original act, can hallow a given social order. (299, emphasis added)

Strauss’s uncharacteristic diction puts one in mind of a post-conception attempt to legitimate the product of an uncovenanted, or even non-consensual, union. The subchapter’s only other discussion of prescription appears in its third part (319). 9. More precisely, Strauss says that Burke applied to the production of the sound political order what modern political economy had taught about the production of public prosperity: the common good is the product of activities which are not by themselves ordered towards the common good . . . The application of this principle to the genesis of the sound political order was one of the two most important elements in the “discovery” of History. The other, equally important, element was supplied by the application of the same principle to the understanding of man’s humanity; man’s humanity was understood as acquired by virtue of accidental causation. This view, of which the classic exposition is to be found in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. . . . (315)

Strauss does not describe Burke’s articulation of the view that the sound political order is the outcome of activities not oriented to that end as that view’s “classic exposition” (or with any similarly weighty epithet). That is to say, nowhere does Strauss indicate that Burke’s view was of a character that merited its pairing with Rousseau’s. It is noteworthy in this regard that the central note to the paragraph under consideration consists solely of a citation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the second of Natural Right and History’s three citations of that work (96n23, 315n100, 319n104). 10. To the extent that this is true, the pairing of Burke and Rousseau would thus help supply one of the two constituent elements of what Strauss identifies as “our most urgent need”: “a nonhistoricist understanding of historicism, that is, an understanding of the genesis of historicism that does not take for granted the soundness of historicism” (33). Cf. WIPP, 64. 11. “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” contains the sole use in Strauss’s books of the phrase “the problem of theory and practice” (303). The sentence as a whole reads: “One may even say that, from the point of view of political philosophy, Burke’s remarks on the problem of theory and practice are the most important part

322

Steven J. Lenzner

of his work” (303). Equally rare is Strauss’s explicitly speaking from “the point of view of political philosophy” (cf. WIPP 13, 125). 12. William Kristol and I briefly sketch this connection between the two parts of “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right” in our “Leo Strauss: An Introduction” (209). Perspectives on Political Science 33(4) (Fall 2004): 204–14. 13. In presenting in “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing” the fundamental insight underlying his rediscovery of exotericism, Strauss notes “opinion is the element of society” (WIPP 221). In the Rousseau subchapter he writes, “The element of society is faith or opinion” (258). If I am not mistaken, the phrase “the element of society” is to be found nowhere else in his books. Strauss does, however, employ it in his much more comprehensive articulation of these Rousseauean considerations, “On the Intention of Rousseau” (Social Research 14 [1947]: 455–87). On the twofold relation between Strauss’s two extended treatments of Rousseau, see Heinrich Meier’s “The History of Philosophy and the Intention of the Philosopher,” in Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 53–74. 14. In the subchapter on Rousseau, the considerations to which Strauss devoted the whole of the central section of the Burke subchapter are largely confined to one lengthy paragraph (257–59). Strauss underscores the perspective characteristic of the Rousseau subchapter in paragraph that follows, saying, “It was by means of science or philosophy that Rousseau established the thesis that science or philosophy is incompatible with free society and hence with virtue. In so doing, he tacitly admitted that science or philosophy can be salutary, that is, compatible with virtue” (259). 15. The first section consists of the first thirteen paragraphs (294–304); paragraphs 14–23 (304–11) constitute the second, and paragraphs 24–34 (311–23) make up the last. 16. Strauss provides a political mirror of this theoretical siding in the subchapter’s second paragraph: “A single faith animated his actions in favor of the American colonists, in favor of the Irish Catholics, against Warren Hastings, and against the French Revolution” (295; cf. 303). 17. “The Crisis of Modern Natural Right”—which opens with Strauss’s colorful description of Rousseau’s enthronement of indignant passion (252)—thus helps supply the defect of one of the most striking silences of Strauss’s two classical chapters, namely the absence of the term “passion.” 18. It is emphatically not a portrait of an “in-between” Burke (“Strauss’s Three Burkes,” 364). 19. And even the mentions of Burke gradually diminish as the section proceeds. His name does not appear at all in the sections’ three concluding paragraphs (309–11). Strauss fails to employ Burke’s name in only three other paragraphs of the subchapter (301–2, 307, 319–21). 20. Or almost entirely. In what is almost literally the center of the central section Strauss employs “an example from the present day” to present the horizon of “the man of civil discretion,” who “is aware of the fact that at present only ‘a wider, if simpler culture’ is possible” (308). The footnote identifies Churchill—the greatest contemporary statesman—as that discreet man. There is in Natural Right and History one earlier citation of Churchill (70n29), and he is alluded to in the chapter on

Strauss’s Burke Reconsidered

323

“Classic Natural Right” (128). Churchill’s only other appearance in Strauss’s books is to be found in Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1970), where Strauss awards him, or his words, the rare honor of an epigraph (100). 21. To see the reasonableness of the suggestion made in this paragraph, the reader only has to compare his initial impression of the subchapter’s coherence to that which results from a reading that omits paragraphs 14–23 (304–11). 22. Whereas Strauss does not speak at all in the central section of Burke’s usage, he indicates toward the outset of the first section why Burke “did not hesitate to use the language of modern natural right” (296) and employs the subchapter’s only other use of “usage” in the very last sentence of the first section (304). 23. To be precise, after the first paragraph of the subchapter had tentatively identified Burke as the attempted restorer of premodern natural right—siding “with Cicero and with Suarez against Hobbes and against Rousseau” (295)—the only philosophers mentioned in the text prior to the third section are Rousseau and Aristotle. Similarly, the only philosophic movement or development subsequently mentioned is in the opening paragraph of the second section, where Strauss says that “what appeared to the generations after Burke as a turn to History, not to say as the discovery of History, was primarily a return to the traditional view of the limitations of theory, as distinguished from practice or prudence” (304). 24. These include the Aristotelian tradition, Aristotle, Epicurean physics, Hume, Rousseau, Locke, History, “the historical school,” Kant, modern political economy, modern philosophy or science, the theological tradition, modern political philosophy, Hegel, philosophy of history, Hegelianism, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, “doctrinairism,” “existentialism,” Cicero, Socrates, and Plato. 25. Of the 350 or so citations of Burke’s writings in the first two sections, only three (300n 76, 310n90 and 311n91) are to the Sublime and Beautiful. By way of contrast, 8 of the 70 citations of Burke in the third section are to that work. Moreover, Strauss draws from its pages that section’s first extended quotation as well as its last. 26. After having provided the full title, Strauss employs its common abridgment in that same paragraph (312) and in the notes to the next one (313n95). The only other title of Burke’s that is mentioned in the subchapter is that of the Reflections on the Revolution in France (313n95, n97). Strauss does, however, manage to work into the essay’s penultimate paragraph the titles of two Platonic dialogues (321). Strauss did not hesitate to provide the titles, if not the full titles, of those writings of Burke that he cited in the earlier chapters of Natural Right and History (70n29, 83n2, 138n15, 169n5, 183n21). 27. For no other thinker treated in Natural Right and History does Strauss provide a like biographical detail (cf. 154–55, 166). The title of Burke’s inquiry also reminds one of the heading of Natural Right and History’s third chapter, “The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right.” 28. In a passage worthy of Strauss, Mansfield in Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders calls attention to the literary importance that dates can have in the hands of a careful writer (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1979), 34. 29. 1689 is the only other year mentioned within the text of Natural Right and History. It occurs toward the outset of the Locke subchapter, in a passage that resonates of Burke and Strauss’s treatment of Burke: “Whereas the cautious theoretician

324

Steven J. Lenzner

would scorn the appeal to prejudices, the cautious man of affairs would try to enlist all reasonable prejudices in the service of the good cause . . . Acting in this spirit, the statesmen who were responsible for the settlement of 1689 which Locke defended in the Two Treatises, ‘cared little whether their major agreed with their conclusion, if their major secured two hundred votes, and the conclusion two hundred more’” (207). This is the only use of the term “statesmen” in the Locke subchapter. In the only use of “statesmen” in the Burke subchapter, Strauss writes, “Whereas theory rejects error, prejudice and superstition, the statesmen puts these to use” (311). Strauss’s treatments of Locke and Burke in Natural Right and History parallel one another to a far greater extent than is commonly realized. In providing the citation to the quote from Macaulay, Strauss mistakenly indicates that the edition in question was undated. 30. For Strauss, “theory” is a far more ambiguous term than is philosophy. And he employs “theory” (and derivatives) more times in the Burke subchapter than he does in the rest of Natural Right and History taken as a whole. Especially suspect is “political theory,” and the small handful of passages in the text of Natural Right and History that speack of it are of particular importance (192, 308, 319, 320; cf. WIPP 13).

16 Metrosexual Manliness Tocqueville’s New Science of Energy Ben Berger

Harvey C. Mansfield’s Manliness generates conversation, controversy, and reflection—the first two among the reading public, the third among his recent students.1 Although my cohort entered graduate school years before Mansfield began his manly project, his interests and emphases subtly influenced our own. However, many of us chose kindred subjects—honor, thumos, love of fame, moral courage, and, in my case, energy—without identifying them as specifically masculine.2 In this essay I will illuminate the role of energy in Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought, energy that can be found in both sexes.3 Tocqueville’s “new political science” cultivates citizens’ energy, courage, and resolve, traits that Tocqueville sometimes (but not always) associates with men, yet it channels and limits them with humanity, judgment, and moral restraint, qualities that Tocqueville often associates with women. Part masculine and part feminine, Tocqueville’s new political science embodies a “metrosexual manliness” for the modern era. I use the term “metrosexual” with humor but sincerity as well, and for two reasons.4 First, it fits: as I have noted, Tocqueville’s “new political science” combines elements that Tocqueville calls masculine and feminine, and that combination is exactly what metrosexuality addresses.5 Second, even faddish and silly terms can contain a grain of genuine insight if examined in the proper light. The insight in this case? Human traits and virtues can be less gender-specific than some traditionalists have supposed. Thus I employ “metrosexual” to tweak good-naturedly the exclusive identification of courage, thumos, and energy with manliness. Tocqueville himself makes those identifications, but in the end he cares less that democracy feature manly men than that it contain energetic citizens, regardless of who provides the juice.6 Energetic women can contribute to the supply without 325

326

Ben Berger

being labeled “manly women,” a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. For an example of energy’s gender-neutrality, consider Lady Macbeth’s infamous soliloquy: Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry “Hold, hold!”7

At first glance, Shakespeare seems to imply that masculinity accomplishes difficult deeds but lacks the remorse and moral thoughtfulness that might stay one’s hand from evil. Femininity apparently shrinks from cruelty by nature and complicates immoral boldness through compunction. But closer examination reveals a different picture. Lady Macbeth asks not to be resexed but unsexed, not for more manliness but less womanliness. She already exceeds her mate in energy, resolve, and ambition; now she desires less womanly humanity and fewer scruples. Energy can be masculine or feminine, but energy without restraint is unsexed—neither manly nor womanly, suitable for only a beast or a god. Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene contrasts Lady Macbeth’s energetic villainy with a more balanced heroine. Spenser’s maiden knight Britomart combines energy, courage, and physical prowess with judgment, temperance, and humanity. She exceeds other knights in strength and courage, unseating Sir Guyon in a joust and walking through fire while her male consort holds back. But Britomart also exemplifies the virtues of chastity and loyalty, and has the moderation to check her energies when appropriate. During a daring, attempted rescue she encounters and heeds a mysterious warning that prefigures Tocqueville’s counsel to democracy: “Be bold, be bold . . . be not too bold.”8 Indeed, the maiden Britomart embodies one of the most important ingredients in Tocqueville’s new political science, namely dynamic energy that is harnessed for worthy projects yet limited by moral perspective and propriety.

Metrosexual Manliness

327

I do not intend to debate the masculinity or femininity of any particular trait, nor “to make man and woman into beings not only equal, but alike” (for which Tocqueville himself rebukes his fellow Europeans) (DA, 573). In other words I am not claiming that all citizens should possess both male and female traits and virtues. I am interested simply in identifying those traits that make democracy work, regardless of the sex that engenders them. Citizens’ energies, for Tocqueville, comprise one of democracy’s most vital resources. Energetic democracies might not always succeed, but enervated democracies—the citizenry completely dependent upon its government and “fear[ing] it will die if it makes an effort”—are sure to end badly. In stressing that point Tocqueville articulates a concern of long standing in the political theory tradition. Philosophers from Plato to William James have regretted democracy’s potential to go soft, to sacrifice martial discipline for fur coats and the fatted calf. The worry is that toughness, discipline, and energy may bring about commercial success that undermines the very traits and virtues that made it possible. Warriors become merchants become sybarites, eventually falling prey to any disciplined, energetic enemies who raise their fists. Free regimes, in which citizens can enjoy the fruits of their energies, require active measures (and a new political science) to prevent their dissipation while tempering their excesses. Public affairs will never attract citizens’ energies enduringly if they do not first attract and hold citizens’ attention, so Tocqueville focuses on both of those resources, namely energy and attention. A third resource fills out the Tocquevillean triumvirate: long-term perspective, or what the first President Bush once dismissed as “the vision thing.” Citizens need but often lack clear perspective on their own long-term interests, which include a sustained investment of attention and energy in the occasionally unappealing business of self-government. Perspective, attention, and energy occupy a far greater portion of Tocqueville’s “new political science” than most readers have supposed. Tocqueville’s new political engineering might be an equally appropriate description, because he aims to pool, channel, and limit citizens’ energies through the use of various tools: institutional design, civic education, moral suasion, and other appeals to citizens’ attention, some of which he identifies with feminine virtues rather than masculine mastery. Too often, contemporary scholars treat Tocqueville as if he were an unqualified enthusiast for democracy in America, overlooking his stern intimations that our success at self-government might be a passing phase.9 At the very outset of Democracy in America Tocqueville sets the tone for his project by worrying about French democracy’s warped political perspective, inadequate political attention, and insufficient political energy. Each citizen “loses sight of the very object of his pursuits,” gives “the least attention” to understanding democracy’s needs, and lacks “the courage and energy” to preserve democratic freedom (DA, 10). In the rest of his magisterial work

328

Ben Berger

Tocqueville elaborates on the connections between perspective, attention, energy, and sustainable freedom. When political attention disperses, when political energy wanes, and when political perspective gives way to shortsighted individualism, meaningful self-government faces an uncertain future. New England circa 1830 might have put France to shame vis-à-vis selfgovernment, but American democracy too contained the seeds of disengagement. Tocqueville identifies both the innate impulses and the environmental factors that impel people toward self-enclosure and the voluntary removal of their energies from collective projects, focusing on four primary factors: equality, materialism, individualism, and isolation.10 The latter two are intimately related and, when taken together, resemble what we now call social and political disengagement. Equality and materialism can promote that disengagement, so they join individualism and isolation in threatening to undermine political perspective, disperse political attention, and absorb political energy in private pursuits. As political engagement declines—as citizens withdraw their attention and energy from self-government in order to focus on materialistic projects—they may appoint a third party to oversee their common affairs. The results are governmental and administrative centralization that may undermine democratic liberty. Hence, Tocqueville’s “principal goal in writing this book has been to combat” the forces impelling democracy toward the related perils of civilian atomization and governmental centralization.11 To be clear, these perils do not stem from abusive government, predatory big business, or foreign adversaries; they arise from within the citizen body. Citizens’ own judgments and actions are largely to blame because their perspective, attention, and energy are limited and sometimes poorly invested. Nonetheless, combating disengagement is not a matter of the government compelling citizens to participate in public life. Attention and energy cannot be coerced or they lose their spontaneity and power. Democratic government must try to elicit political energy and attention with a soft touch, through persuasion, education, and inducement, and then channel and limit those resources responsibly, rather than attempt the kind of excessively macho and self-defeating coercion that “without perceiving it, drives away the object of its covetousness.”12

ENERGY Throughout Democracy in America Tocqueville refers to energy (énergie) fifty times, giving astonishing prominence to a term more commonly found in physics texts than in political philosophy.13 Tocqueville’s energy describes the motive force behind action, the fuel for achievement of any human ends. Energy undergirds individual and collective action, part psychological

Metrosexual Manliness

329

and part physiological. Thus energy encompasses Aristotle’s distinctions between dunamis, kinesis, and energeia—human potential, activity, and actualization—which are rooted in the human psyche as well as the biological world.14 Energy signifies much more than mere desire, which, lacking motive force behind it, cannot accomplish anything of value. Consider Tocqueville’s complaint about his homeland: Each [Frenchman] feels the ill, but no one has the courage and energy needed to seek something better; like the passions of old men that end only in impotence, desires, regrets, sorrows and joys produce nothing visible or lasting. (DA, 10)

Tocqueville repeatedly claims that desire alone, without the courage, energy, or power for actualization, leaves one’s goals unfulfilled. When commenting on the scarcity of great learning in democracies, Tocqueville observes that “the will to engage in these works is lacking as much as is the power” (DA, 51). Effective work requires not only the will to choose an object but the energy or power to get the job done. Is energy manly? Yes and no. By separating desire from energy Tocqueville invokes Plato’s division between eros, which chooses an object for pursuit, and thumos, which can affirm or reject the choice.15 Indeed, Tocqueville’s energy is akin to thumos, and Tocqueville occasionally associates it with manly virility and indomitability. Energy exists to be actualized, and energetic characters hate illegitimate constraint or arbitrary rule. Thus Tocqueville often places energy alongside thumos’s corollaries, courage and love of freedom.16 Tocqueville criticizes French aristocrats for their debauched cruelty but praises their energy, their “pride of heart,” and the “manly mores” that make them “the most resistant part of the social body.”17 Similarly, Tocqueville honors the early Native Americans as a quasi-aristocratic race possessing “the energy of barbarism,” a “proud soul,” “courage,” and an “intractable love of independence.”18 Energy without courage often falters, as Tocqueville observed among his European contemporaries. In France “society is tranquil . . . it fears it will die if it makes an effort” (DA, 10). And in Germany Tocqueville regrets the disappearance of “the activity, the energy, the communal patriotism, the fertile and manly virtues” that had once been inspired by medieval laws.19 But Tocqueville also praises American women, “who often display a manly reason and a wholly virile energy” while not being “manly” women. For all their energy they “generally preserve a very delicate appearance and always remain women in their manners. . . .”20 Energy might mark American men more vividly but characterizes American women as well. Governments as well as individuals require energy to act swiftly and effectively, to execute their goals and defend their independence. As the people are democracy’s ruling element, the institutions of government are essentially tools or mechanisms for achieving the people’s collective ends and

330

Ben Berger

the public good. Like all mechanisms they require inputs of energy in order to function. Indeed, throughout his political works Tocqueville draws upon mechanistic metaphors to hammer home the importance of institutions fueled by citizens’ collective energy. In New England townships “everything moves around you and nowhere do you discover the motor. The hand that directs the social machine vanishes at each instant” (DA, 67). In the Old Regime, Tocqueville insists that the “greatness and power of a people” cannot be adduced to “the mechanism of its laws alone; for, in this matter, it is less the perfection of the instrument than the strength of the motors that determines the result” (OR, 221). Collective energy is the fuel that facilitates society’s activity, supplies the “motive force” and tends the “strength of [its] motors.”21 Motive force and activity, in turn, are closely associated with freedom itself. Consider the well-known passage in which Tocqueville inveighs against administrative centralization: What does it matter to me, after all, that there should be an authority always on its feet, keeping watch that my pleasures are tranquil, flying ahead of my steps to turn away every danger without my even needing to think about it, if this authority, at the same that it removes the least thorns on my path, is absolute master of my freedom and my life, if it monopolizes movement and existence to such a point that everything around it must languish when it languishes, that everything must sleep when its sleeps, that everything must perish if it dies? (DA, 88)

“Freedom” and “life” should be read as a pair, alongside “movement” and “existence.” When government is the master of the first pair, it monopolizes the second. Thus, life parallels existence—a rather obvious equation—but also, more provocatively, freedom parallels movement. In his chapter on the ubiquity of energetic activity throughout the United States Tocqueville contrasts free and non-free countries in terms of their activity. In free countries, “all is activity and movement; here [in France], all seems calm and immobile” (DA, 231). In his eyes, “the greatest advantage of democratic government” may be the “agitation, constantly reborn,” introduced by democratic government and carried into civil society (DA, 233). Because energy and activity are the engines of self-government’s independence, political science—”that great science of government”—must teach “how to understand the general movement of society” (OR, 199). While energy is a capacity residing in every individual, it functions best when utilized collectively. Energetic individuals face overwhelming odds when they act by themselves, as shown by the case of the failed reformer: “He exhausts himself in the wish to animate this indifferent and distracted crowd, and finally he sees himself reduced to powerlessness, not because he is defeated, but because he is alone” (DA, 610). To be enduringly success-

Metrosexual Manliness

331

ful, collective energy must be voluntary as well, for “[o]ne will never encounter . . . genuine power among men except in the free concurrence of wills” (DA, 89). Tocqueville often contrasts the efficacy of freely combined energies with the futility of coercion. When a centralized, despotic government forces people to work toward imposed goals it courts disaster, because “it is not under such conditions that one obtains the concurrence of the human will” necessary to produce “genuine power.” Slavery, the ultimate coercion of energy and effort, is not only unjust but inefficient: “masters make slaves work without being obliged to pay them, but they receive little fruit from their efforts, while the money that they would give to free workers would be recovered with interest from the value of their labors.”22 Thus, while isolated or coerced individuals are immobile and ineffective, a society of energetic individuals working in overlapping projects generates an important store of power (even if it falls short of aristocratic greatness). That power makes possible impressive, collective efforts as well as a viable, common defense against the encroaching power of domestic governments and foreign threats. Tocqueville’s emphasis on collective energy prefigures Hannah Arendt’s insistence on the cooperative nature of power.23 For both Tocqueville and Arendt, energy and power must be used or risk atrophy. Should democratic citizens abandon their collective, energetic pursuits, they abandon their primary resource for resisting despotism’s sway. While the relentless activity produced by widespread liberty may seem frightening or exhausting, citizens should not yield to the temptation to withdraw from public life. “I know that in our day there are many honest people . . . who, fatigued by freedom, would like to rest at last far from its storms,” Tocqueville says, but “they know very poorly the port toward which they direct themselves” (DA, 298–99). Energy must reside in any regime’s ruling element. Thus, healthy aristocracies must have an energetic nobility; healthy democracies need an energetic citizenry. The nobility’s tastes, loves, and habits decide the goals toward which aristocracies direct their collective energies; in democracies, popular tastes (and social conditions) dictate the same. Aristocracies, moved by what Tocqueville considers to be “great” loves, can “act strongly on all [other nations] . . . attempt great undertakings and . . . great actions. . . .” (DA, 234–35). The resulting rewards, however, are distributed inequitably: “The capital vice for which aristocracy is reproached is that of working only for itself, and not for the mass” (DA, 219). Conversely, one of the “true advantages” of democracy is that “it spreads a restive activity through the whole social body, a superabundant force, an energy that never exists without it, and which . . . can bring forth marvels” (DA, 234). The democratization of energy results in greater overall prosperity but also lower goals, because of democracy’s prosaic tastes. Nonetheless, while democracy’s goals and achievements may not be as impressive, Tocqueville praises

332

Ben Berger

democracy less for its outcomes than for its processes—the continual motion evoked by democratic institutions and continued throughout civil society—that he believes essential to sustaining widespread freedom. While the people are democracy’s ruling element, Tocqueville realizes that in modern democracies citizens must delegate a share of their power to a centralized government.24 To govern justly and well, central government requires energy and firmness. As Madison writes in Federalist 37, “Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger, and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government.”25 Tocqueville cites the Federalist approvingly, never disagreeing on the importance of governmental energy, but he emphasizes a complementary point. Madison, writing during a period of unstable, ineffective government, tries to ensure sufficient energy for the Union. Tocqueville, with fifty years’ hindsight, insists that energetic government must be balanced by equal energy in the citizenry. Thus, while all of the Federalist’s (thirty-one) references to political energy concern the energy of government, all but one of Democracy in America’s references to political energy concern the energy of the people.26 Too often, political science scholarship focuses on policy proposals and government initiatives as if government itself were the regime’s ruling element. Tocqueville’s insights are a reminder that democracy’s ruling element must always be the people, and if their energy departs, so does democracy. Even though he lacks the twentieth-century term “bureaucracy,” Tocqueville recognizes that concept as the logical and regrettable outcome should centralized administration ever monopolize political energy. Tocqueville associates bureaucratic monopoly with the end of meaningful democracy and a likely step toward harsh or soft despotism.27 Tocqueville frequently uses the metaphors of water and molecules to enhance his descriptions of human relations.28 When molecules are too far apart, their energy can dissipate or evaporate; when they are too close together, they are frozen and immobile. In Tocqueville’s words, “despotism . . . walls [citizens] up inside their private lives. They already tend to keep themselves apart from one another: despotism isolates them; it chills their relations; it freezes them” (OR, 87). Individuals and their political energy require proper proximity to one another—neither the “iron bands” of despotism nor the atomization of mass society.29 Even with the proper distance between its sources, energy must also be channeled effectively. Otherwise, collected energy could flow in many directions and thus deplete its potential, or could flood all at once and cause great damage. Consider Tocqueville’s choice of metaphors: “municipal bodies and the administrations of counties therefore form so many hidden shoals that delay or divide the flood of the popular will,” and political associations are a “dike against tyranny” of the majority or of an oppressive faction (DA, 250, 192). The

Metrosexual Manliness

333

same metaphor holds regarding governmental energy. In France, Tocqueville says, an inefficient system of public employment “was like an irregular and badly constructed dike which divided the central power’s strength and dissipated its shock” (OR, 172). If the collective energies are limited and channeled toward representative institutions that allow them expression, they can be harnessed toward useful projects and sometimes even great ones. If energy is such a vital component of political and economic success, why must we limit it? Just as freedom must be circumscribed to be enjoyed in the long term—if all people do exactly as they like, anarchy looms on the horizon—the people’s collective energy must be limited and channeled. Otherwise, collected energy tends toward entropy. Energy that is not pooled and directed can stagnate or wither, just as energy that is pooled but not limited can rage out of control and end in anarchy. Tocqueville observes both these conditions in France before the Revolution: . . . the progress of government often slowed and sometimes stopped: public life was as suspended. At other times, it was by excess of activity and self-confidence that the new governments sinned . . . wanting to make everything better, they ended up confusing everything. (OR, 237)

Thus collective energy must not only be channeled toward useful projects but kept within appropriate limits. The most important of these limiting influences include laws and political institutions, “habits of the heart” (customs and mores), and one of the most important influences, organized religion.30 Tocqueville observed American men investing their energies in the business of commerce and politics, with women investing theirs in the maintenance of morality and order. He was so impressed with this complementary pairing that he ascribed “the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation” to “the superiority of the women” over their European counterparts. Religion can restrain people’s actions within a bounded moral universe and, perhaps more importantly, “impose a salutary control on the intellect.” Absolute freedom to invest energy and attention can be worrisome or even maddening. In both religion and politics, “men are soon frightened by the limitless independence with which they are faced.” In Tocqueville’s view (to which Durkheim would later assent), freely accepted limitations on thought and action make meaningful freedom a possibility in the first place.31 Faced with an endless riot of possibilities, energy would soon dissipate. As he puts it, “Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude” (DA, 418). But while Tocqueville credits religion for bolstering Americans’ mores and hence confining their energies to responsible and relatively ethical pursuits, he knows that religion itself cannot do the job. Here Tocqueville once again gives

334

Ben Berger

women and femininity pride of place, a necessary complement to, and restraint of, masculine energy and boldness: Religion [in the U.S.] is often powerless to restrain man in the midst of the innumerable temptations that fortune presents to him. It cannot moderate the ardor in him for enriching himself, which everything comes to excite, but it reigns as a sovereign over the soul of women, and it is woman who makes mores. (DA, 278–79)

To Tocqueville, femininity involves neither obeisance nor subservience but a healthy acceptance of appropriate limitations. So far from being mere followers by nature, women can accept moral limitations and also lead their restless men to compliance.32 In this sense they embody Aristotle’s conception of the citizen, being ruled (by religious mores) and ruling (over their constantly tempted husbands) in turn.33 Thus America’s moral and political landscapes are marked by restless and productive energies as well as salutary limitations and order: . . . everything is certain and fixed in the moral world, although the political world seems to be abandoned to the discussion and attempts of men. So the human spirit never perceives an unlimited field before itself: however bold it may be, from time to time it feels that it ought to halt before insurmountable barriers. Before innovating, it is forced to accept certain primary givens and to submit its boldest conceptions to certain forms that delay and halt it. (DA, 279)

Tocqueville would have it no other way; if a democracy were not both energetic and limited in the American manner, its leaders would have to find other ways of making it so. Late in volume two Tocqueville reiterates, “One must try to pose the farthest boundaries for [ambition] in advance that it will never be permitted to cross; but one ought to guard against hindering its ascent too much within the permitted limits” (DA, 604). Combining masculine energy and feminine respect for limitations (as well as the feminine energy needed to enforce moral restraint), the America that Tocqueville commends indeed recalls Spenser’s counsel to Britomart: “be bold, be bold . . . be not too bold.” Tempering boldness with judgment requires not only the respect for limitations that religious observance can reinforce, but also a long-term perspective on the well-being of the individual and the community, a trait that Tocqueville links more closely with women than with men.

PERSPECTIVE Among its several roles, Democracy in America is a meditation on vision. Throughout that work (and also in the Old Regime) Tocqueville draws on

Metrosexual Manliness

335

metaphors of clear and far-reaching vision, and contrasting imagery of blindness and obfuscation.34 In Democracy in America he proposes “to see not differently but further,” and in the Old Regime he desires “to see into the heart of the old regime, so close to us in years, but hidden from us by the Revolution” (OR, Preface, 84). Further, on more than a dozen occasions in Democracy in America Tocqueville distinguishes what is apparent “at first glance” (“au premier coup d’oeil”) and what turns out to be true upon “more attentive examination” (DA, 70, 416). Those choices underscore Tocqueville’s deep concern with democracy’s long-term perspective and the factors that habitually cloud its sight. Every legitimate regime requires a long-term perspective on the goals it can sustain and the means necessary to achieve them. Aristocracy, in spite of its many shortcomings, is well equipped for clear vision. At its best, aristocracy can set glorious, far-reaching goals, form the sound judgment necessary to pursue them, and achieve fruition by overcoming short-term desires. Government by nobility, “master of itself . . . is not subject to getting carried away in passing distractions; it has long designs that it knows how to ripen until a favorable occasion presents itself” (DA, 222).35 For all democracy’s advantages over aristocracy—most notably, its greater justice— long-term perspective frequently eludes its grasp. Tocqueville notes that “it is this clear perception of the future, founded on enlightenment and experience, that democracy will often lack” (DA, 214).36 Why should this be the case? Citizens have a difficult time judging appropriate long-term goals for their society because their materialistic desires direct them toward present satisfactions, and because the immediacy of those desires undermines the deep reflection required of good judgment. As Tocqueville laments, “In centuries in which almost everyone acts, one is therefore generally brought to attach an excessive value to rapid sparks and superficial conceptions of the intellect and, on the contrary, to depreciate immoderately its profound, slow work” (DA, 435). Further, most people “see less clearly than the upper classes what they can hope or fear from the future,” in part because democracies lack a class of life-long statesmen, imbued with a respect for past and future generations (DA, 214). Thus, most citizens lack the aristocratic elites’ experience with public affairs. Not only that, but democracy’s “natural instincts”—its love of equality and mistrust of superiority—”bring the people to keep distinguished men away from power” (DA, 189). For their part, these distinguished figures often shun public office, either to avoid its frequent tawdriness or to pursue greater fortunes in private life. Despite these obstacles, democracy must develop and sustain some kind of clear perspective on its long-term interests, its achievable desires, and the appropriate relationship of citizens to one another.37 Tocqueville calls this the “doctrine of self-interest well understood.” Note: “well” understood, not “best” understood. Less rigorous than Aristotle’s virtue of practical wisdom

336

Ben Berger

(phronēsis), which evaluates virtuous ends and the means to achieve them, self-interest well understood—which I identify with democratic “perspective”—takes the people’s ends as given and evaluates the means to achieve them imperfectly but enduringly. Self-interest well understood is “general theory” that helps Americans “to combine their own well-being with that of their fellow citizens” (DA, 501). It dictates that individuals pay attention to and act in accordance with those norms “appropriate to the times,” which include toleration, reciprocity, cooperation, and interpersonal trust. It tells citizens that they must help each other in order to accomplish their own ends, even if they find cooperation temporarily unpleasant. As Tocqueville describes it, “enlightened self-love continually leads them to help one another and disposes them freely to give part of their time and wealth for the good of the state.” Tocqueville endorses self-interest well understood as a flawed but undeniably useful asset that is the best moral doctrine available to most people.38 The doctrine of self-interest well understood and its corollary norms are democratic virtues because, while they do not dictate phenomenal sacrifices or individual excellence, they are accessible and appealing to all. In their absence—should citizens no longer be touched or moved by “those great and powerful public emotions” that can motivate communal undertakings or the mingling of self-interest with the commonweal—self-government and democratic freedom would be jeopardized (DA, 616). Tocqueville claims that among Americans the doctrine of self-interest well understood had “come to be universally accepted,” but acceptance does not equal active emulation; it may mean that people pay attention to social and moral norms without an energetic follow-through (DA, 526). Tocqueville’s observations imply that a citizenry steered by self-interest well understood is more of an ideal than an empirical observation.39 In practice, long-term vision often falters: Do not say to men that in giving themselves over so blindly to an exclusive passion, they compromise their dearest interests; they are deaf. Do not show them that freedom escapes from their hands while they are looking elsewhere; they are blind, or rather they perceive only one good in the whole universe worth longing for (DA, 481).40

In other words, it must be hoped but cannot be guaranteed that the people will have a taste for what they truly need. We might hope that reason or calculation will inform or shape desire, but we cannot always depend on it.41 (The Constitution represents one institution by which the people decide, in advance, what they are not allowed to desire.42) For all his attention to the doctrine of interest rightly understood, and his insistence that people must be educated to its tenets, Tocqueville does not expect reason alone to clar-

Metrosexual Manliness

337

ify democracy’s vision and forge its morals. Reason requires the additional influence of moderate habituation and the restraint provided by organized religion that can temper people’s desires and help to enlarge their perspectives.43 Together with these supporting influences, self-interest well understood may not put reason in the seat of power but may make passions and interests more reasonable.44 Here women enter the picture again. If democracies tend toward myopia—constantly in need of moderation and religiously based restraint— democratic women can bring a corrective perspective. Tocqueville repeatedly highlights women’s clear vision: . . . before she has entirely left childhood she already thinks for herself, speaks freely, and acts alone; the great picture of the world is constantly exposed before her; far from seeking to conceal the view of it from her, they uncover more and more of it to her regard every day and teach her to consider it with a firm and tranquil eye. Thus the vices and perils that society presents are not slow to be revealed to her; she sees them clearly, judges them without illusion, and faces them without fear; for she is full of confidence in her strength. . . . (DA, 563)

Seeing clearly the risks, rewards, and requirements of life in a democracy, Tocqueville’s young women are bold but not too bold. “[I]n the very midst of the independence of her first youth,” he writes, “the American woman never entirely ceases to be mistress of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without abandoning herself to any of them, and her reason does not drop the reins although it often seems to let them dangle” (DA, 564). These women are no shrinking violets, and they contribute their own energies to the democratic engine. Tocqueville’s women shape democracy’s mores— which limit the uses to which its energies can be put—and face reversals of fortune with “strength of will,” “courage,” and “tranquil and indomitable energy” (DA, 566–67). This is not to say that Tocqueville envisions women holding public office and directing the commonwealth with their judgment and candor. Rather he sees them “cloistered” in the domestic circle, exerting a salutary influence behind the scenes. The point that I wish to stress is that for Tocqueville, long-term perspective, stable mores, and educated moderation are vital influences on democratic energy: “republicans in the United States . . . profess the opinion that a people ought to be moral, religious, and moderate to the degree it is free” (DA, 379). Tocqueville happens to associate the influences of morality, religion, and moderation with women, so in his “new political science” the feminine complements the masculine. But even if one were to contest his identification of those influences with women, his prescription for democratic health—his insistence that those influences be present— would remain just as cogent.

338

Ben Berger

Moderation and restraint are seldom aligned with nobility and greatness, as Tocqueville occasionally laments. Nonetheless, democracy’s special excellence resides in its potential for facilitating widespread freedom—the freedom to invest time, energy, and attention as individuals see fit. But to fulfill that potential, citizens must invest attention and energy not only freely but wisely, with an eye toward sustainability and long-term consequences. Otherwise, conditions of maximal freedom can produce conditions in which that freedom disappears for “by demanding too much freedom one gets too much slavery.”45

ATTENTION Every regime’s ruling element must attend to political affairs. Without political attention, collective problems and public interests would go without redress. Encroachments against liberty would proceed unchecked. And yet in modern times, representative democracy has become virtually synonymous with delegated political attention. Citizens elect representatives to look after political affairs and turn their own attention to other pursuits. Tocqueville fears that energy will accompany attention in the headlong flight from political affairs and self-government. In his understanding—and this is extremely important if we are to grasp Tocqueville’s “new political science”—energy generally follows attention. If a subject does not hold people’s attention it will not enduringly attract their energy and activity. If the people’s attention, and hence energy and activity, leave the political realm altogether, they are left with a government that “monopolizes movement and existence to such a point that everything around it must languish when it languishes . . .” (DA, 88). Tocqueville considers whether attention might follow reason or rational self-interest—in other words, whether people tend to pay attention to issues and activities that affect their long-term interests as well as short-term desires. Unfortunately for democracy and political engagement, attention is largely a function of tastes—and while tastes can be educated by reason and shaped by moral values those educative influences have their limits.46 In most instances attention follows tastes, and energy follows attention.47 A taste for freedom might direct attention and energy to self-government, but a passion for material well-being, leisure, or for being left alone may divert democracy’s resources (and influence its political health) in a different direction altogether.48 Tocqueville implies that people can only be engaged with—that is, active in and attentive to—a limited number of issues or concerns. He finds Americans to be completely consumed by their activities, saying that “not only are [Americans] occupied, but they have a passion for their occupations. They are perpetually in action, and each of their actions

Metrosexual Manliness

339

absorbs their soul; the fire they put into affairs prevents them from being inflamed by ideas” (DA, 614). Because of their many distractions they do not even pay much heed to respected leaders and officials: “when one has acquired the confidence of a democratic people, it is still a great affair to get its attention [d’obtenir son attention]” (DA, 614). Political affairs must compete with commerce, entertainment, and the pleasures of private life for the scarce resources of attention and energy. To attract attention and energy they must appeal to people’s tastes. As early as 1832, then, Tocqueville warns that we should not be surprised to see politics-as-spectacle: When he has been drawn out of himself, he therefore always expects that he is going to be offered some enormous object to look at, and it is only at this price that he consents to tear himself for a moment from the small, complicated cares that agitate and charm his life. (DA, 464)

Commerce gives politics stiff competition for citizens’ limited attention and energy. Commerce appeals not only to Americans’ taste for material goods but for the impassioned activity that is sometimes associated with politics. “In democracies there is nothing greater nor more brilliant than commerce,” Tocqueville writes, “it is what attracts the regard of the public and fills the imagination of the crowd; all energetic passions are directed toward it.”49 The danger is apparent, namely that commerce or other “brilliant” involvements may charm popular attention away from involvement with self-government, even though the latter channels, pools, and mingles people’s energies, upholds democratic freedom, and hence enables pursuit of commerce in the first place. In special instances politics may outpace its competitors. Political crises, for instance, can focus citizens’ attention on political affairs. But as soon as the trouble has passed, attention and energy wander after tastes once again. Further, the focusing effect of crises is not only impermanent but also indeterminate. Crisis can focus attention and energy on self-government and the common defense, but can just as easily disperse them.50 Tocqueville writes of the American Revolution and aftermath: It was this very prosperity that began to make people lose sight of the cause that had produced it; the danger having passed, Americans no longer found in themselves the energy and patriotism that had helped to ward it off. Delivered from the fears that had preoccupied them, they readily reverted to the ordinary tendency of their penchants. (DA, 371)

For all these reasons Tocqueville fears that democratic citizens will always struggle to focus their attention on political affairs, and hence will always be at risk of a political energy crisis. When citizens withdraw their attention and energy from public and collective affairs they court a condition that Tocqueville calls isolation, a condition

340

Ben Berger

that can encourage the warped perspective of individualism (and ultimately egoism). And in spite of his current fame as a civil society enthusiast, Tocqueville is much more concerned with avoiding radical isolation and individualism than with promoting unlimited associationism and community. Political associations and social togetherness have their downsides, the former potentially undermining political order and the latter potentially quashing free thought and expression. Political engagement is not guaranteed to teach the art of ruling well. Township government is inefficient and messy, and in pre-revolutionary France associations contributed to a thoroughly un-civic culture. But while political engagement brings uncertain rewards, widespread political disengagement almost certainly undermines political capacities and self-government. We need look no further than the eighteenth-century French intellectuals who lacked any exposure to active engagement, and who viewed politics from an “almost infinite distance from practice” (OR, 197). Their fellow citizens, had no “daily involve[ment] in regional administration,” and hence were susceptible to the extraordinarily bad political advice, the “contempt for existing facts,” that French intellectuals offered them (OR, 195–202). Tocqueville suggests that the French Revolution’s excesses were due in no small measure to the debilitated political perspective resulting from widespread political disengagement. Political energy suffers as well as political and moral perspective. By definition, isolated citizens withdraw their energy and attention from public affairs. Tocqueville worries that isolated energies may not only stagnate but diminish. As we saw earlier, Tocqueville suggests that in the absence of continual agitation and progress, energy tends toward disuse and atrophy. Energy responds with special ardor to circumstances that allow for personal distinction, but isolated individuals are out of the game. Energy unused becomes energy squandered, at both the individual and the collective level: If citizens continue to confine themselves more and more narrowly in the circle of small domestic interests, there to become agitated without rest, one can apprehend that in the end they will become almost inaccessible to those great and powerful public emotions that trouble peoples, but develop and renew them. (DA, 616)

Tocqueville worries not simply that people will fail to exercise the “great and powerful public emotions” that stir them, but that, through this inactivity, the rousing force may become “practically out of reach” even if the people want or need them. “Ambition may lose both its spark and its greatness,” base materialism may “loosen the springs of action,” and an enervated people may lose the ability even to maintain its independence, let alone accomplish anything of lasting importance.51

Metrosexual Manliness

341

The conditions of social equality promote political disengagement in the form of individualism and isolation. Equality “tends to isolate [men] from one another and to bring each of them to be occupied with himself alone.”52 But equality also “lays open their souls excessively to the love of material enjoyments,” and materialism is Tocqueville’s fourth great concern for sustainable self-government (DA, 419). Under conditions of social equality most individuals could never hope to achieve fame or political power. But wealth and material pleasures are available to many, and thus conditions of social equality encourage pursuit of worldly goods: “The same causes that render citizens independent of one another push them every day toward new and restive desires and spur them constantly” (DA, 607).53 Materialism, in turn, can increase citizens’ isolation. We seek privacy in which to enjoy the fruits of our labor, and the experience of private enjoyment sharpens our desires. “[T]hese objects are small,” Tocqueville says, “but the soul clings to them: it considers them every day and from very close; in the end they hide the rest of the world from it, and they sometimes come to place themselves between it and God” (DA, 509). In American and also French democracy he laments the increasing “desire to enrich oneself at any price, the preference for business, the love of profit, the search for material pleasure and comfort. . . .” These “most widespread desires” often “occupy men’s minds and turn them away from public affairs . . .” (OR, 87). Materialism damages all three of the qualities that Tocqueville’s new political science seeks to promote—perspective, energy, and attention. The “blind passion” for wealth perverts political perspective and self-interest well understood: Preoccupied with the sole care of making a fortune, they no longer perceive the tight bond that unites the particular fortune of each of them to the prosperity of all. There is no need to tear from such citizens the rights they possess; they themselves willingly allow them to escape. The exercise of their political duties appears to them a distressing contretemps that distracts them from their industry. . . . These people believe they are following the doctrine of interest, but they have only a coarse idea of it, and to watch better over what they call their affairs, they neglect the principal one, which is to remain masters of themselves (DA, 515).

Material desires focus on immediate or imminent satisfactions while democratic freedom requires long-term perspective on citizens’ interests. Immediate satisfactions are also easy pickings, and, because they do not require well-invested energy, a life of short-term gratification lets energy stagnate. Early in Democracy in America, in an apparently unimportant account of South Sea islands, Tocqueville foreshadows his concern with democracy’s

342

Ben Berger

enervating materialism. In the tropical “enchanted places,” where everything “seemed prepared for the needs of man or calculated for his pleasures,” Tocqueville identifies “a certain enervating influence that attached man to the present and rendered him careless of the future” (DA, 22). He reiterates similar worries throughout the following political analyses. Individuals absorbed with material pleasures are “more prone to become enervated than debauched,” and one finds at the collective level a kind of “honest materialism that does not corrupt souls, but softens them and in the end quietly loosens all their tensions” (DA, 509). For the time being, Tocqueville’s Americans maintain their springs’ tautness by investing their energies in cooperative projects and thus looking after their own affairs (as far as possible). Tocqueville addresses three different kinds of participation that modern scholarship often includes under the catch-all rubric of “civic engagement”: township administration, political associations, and civil associations. In Tocqueville’s eyes, they are particularly desirable because they all attract and embody citizens’ collective political attention and energy. This differentiates them from activities such as voting, which some political scientists regard as the quintessential measure of political participation. For Tocqueville, political participation is good insofar as it means that citizens’ attention and energy are focused on their common affairs and the business of self-government. Were political participation to consist primarily in periodic voting—even if most citizens participated—Tocqueville would lament the declining habits and spirits of independence, as when he remarks that “citizens quit their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters and then fall back into it” (DA, 693). Tocqueville’s preference for political participation that directly involves citizens’ energies in cooperative activities and self-government speaks to the recent political science literature that highlights socalled voter ignorance. This literature questions whether citizens know enough about complex national politics to do more good than harm.54 Yet even if today’s citizens truly are politically ignorant—and here I take no stance—it would not make Tocqueville’s vision of democracy less feasible. Citizens participating directly in self-government and local administration do not exhibit the kinds of ignorance that some political scientists fear. Not only does direct participation in local affairs involve citizens’ attention and energies in self-government to a far greater extent than periodic voting, but it puts those energies to a more efficacious use. Tocqueville’s chapter on American townships is probably the most commonly consulted section of his most famous book, Democracy in America. Nonetheless, scholars seldom cite more than a line or two from that chapter, and even less commonly do they situate it within the context of Tocqueville’s larger project (which must also include the Old Regime). For those reasons it merits extensive consideration. Tocqueville lauds the

Metrosexual Manliness

343

township system because it provides incentives for self-serving men to become public-serving citizens. Note: men and not women, because Tocqueville portrays the township’s lures as specifically appealing to male ambitions and vanities. The political engagement of township administration does not begin as public-spiritedness or virtue. Rather, Tocqueville describes nineteenth-century Americans as what rational choice theorists might call “utility-maximizing” individuals, who turn their attention and energy to cooperative ventures when the individual benefits are obvious and the costs of participating are low.55 Desire and taste are the initial lures: “desire for esteem, the need of real interests, the taste for power and for attention” “excite men’s interest” to the township’s ample resources.56 The township is “the principle of public administration” in New England because it is “the hearth around which the interests and affections of men come to gather” (DA, 76). While Tocqueville observes that township government “is to [citizens’] taste as well as of their choice,” in truth it is “of their choice” because it is suited to their tastes (DA, 65). The existence of local resources provides only part of citizens’ motivation to participate. Even prodigious rewards, if inaccessible, rarely excite people’s attention or energy. For example, since federal offices and their significant power are extremely difficult to attain, “ambition cannot make them the permanent goal of its efforts” (DA, 64). The township’s resources, however, are not only ample but readily available. The citizen sees the township as “a free and strong corporation that he is a part of and that is worth his trouble to seek to direct,” and so a great number of people “exploit the power of the township for their profit and take interest in it for themselves” (DA, 64). To use the language of modern scholarship, township administration attracts citizens’ attention and energies by convincing them of their “political efficacy.”57 Once the township’s “advantages” have “excited men’s interest” and “attract[ed] the ambitious passions of the human heart,” the average citizen “places his ambition and his future” in township administration—invests his attention and energy—sharing there in decision and office (DA, 63–65). Earlier I noted Tocqueville’s insistence that individual energies must be pooled, limited, and channeled toward useful ends. The township serves those purposes admirably. By appealing to the tastes and hence attracting the attention and energy of self-interested individuals, it embodies “independence and power” and engenders “a continual, but at the same time peaceful, movement that agitates [society] without troubling it” (DA, 63–65). The initially selfish engagement holds transformative potential, because tastes can be shaped and perspective can be educated.58 The experience of cooperative engagement enlarges citizens’ political perspective by drawing

344

Ben Berger

them outside of themselves and their narrow concerns. Those pursuing short-term resources come to realize that their long-term self-interest requires continued political engagement: this is self-interest well understood. Even when people manage public affairs “very badly”—which is often the case, in Tocqueville’s view—”the people cannot meddle in public affairs without having the scope of their ideas extended and without having their minds be seen to go outside their ordinary routine” (DA, 233). The citizen engaged with local government “finally assembles clear and practical ideas on the nature of his duties as well as the extent of his rights” (DA, 65). The political engagement of township administration can set in motion a beneficial, self-reinforcing cycle (or “virtuous circle”). As citizens experience self-government and the pleasures of local freedom they develop a stronger taste for the same, and grow better equipped to identify encroachments by hostile powers.59 And as they treat “common problems in common,” their initially self-involved perspectives often widen to include notions of duty and reciprocal responsibility. The experience of self-government enlarges political competence as well as political perspective. Just as juries are schools for citizenship, “the institutions of a township are to freedom what primary schools are to science; they put it within reach of the people” because they “make them taste [freedom’s] peaceful employ and habituate them to making use of it” (DA, 57). For Tocqueville, handson experience can teach political responsibility and the necessity of selfgovernment in a uniquely powerful way, and townships provide a much more accessible venue than state or national governments. Thus, “in this restricted sphere that is within his reach,” the locally engaged citizen “tries to govern society” (DA, 65). Nonetheless, local self-government is frequently inefficient and messy, although in Tocqueville’s view its benefits more than outweigh the costs. He compares efficient, centralized administration in France to American townships “whose budgets are not drawn up on methodical and above all uniform plans,” and sides strongly with the latter, saying that I see most of those French communes, whose accountancy is so perfect, plunged in a profound ignorance of their true interests and left in such an invincible apathy that society seems rather to vegetate than to live in them; on the other hand, I perceive in those same American townships . . . an enlightened, active, enterprising population; I contemplate a society always at work there. (DA, 87–88n)

France’s centralized efficiency, which monopolizes administration, lacks each of the essential political goods that I have associated with political engagement: political perspective (“ignorance of their true interests”), political attention (“invincible apathy”), and political energy or motion (“rather

Metrosexual Manliness

345

to vegetate than to live”). America’s messy townships, in which average citizens administer common affairs, produce the opposite results despite their inefficiencies. But as Tocqueville realizes, inefficient engagement is a hard sell with commercially oriented citizens, even if it promotes long-term self-interest. Much more likely is a rapid loss of patience with local governments’ untidiness and inefficiency for “the exercise of their political duties” may come to seem “a distressing contretemps that distracts them from their industry” (DA, 515). Impatience may lead citizens to delegate administration to an efficient, centralized power and precede a descent into soft despotism. Tocqueville extends his analysis of associations beyond the “municipal freedoms” of township administration to include the attentive activity of political associations. While township administration constitutes formal government—an institution of the state—political associations are of private origin, and “owe their birth and development only to individual will” (DA, 180). Tocqueville’s political associations are thoroughly instrumental: An association consists solely in the public adherence that a certain number of individuals give to such and such a doctrine, and in the engagement in which they contract to cooperate in a certain fashion to make it prevail. (DA, 181)

The motivation to associate has nothing to do with citizens’ expressing an intrinsically political human nature or fulfilling their highest capacities, as civic republican theorists sometimes portray it. Rather, stated in mechanistic terms, “the association gathers the efforts of divergent minds in a cluster and drives them vigorously toward a single goal clearly indicated by it” (DA, 181). Individually, political associations have any number of ends; categorically, they serve one overarching purpose. Political associations are sites of resistance, those institutions “by which men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of the majority or the encroachments of . . . power.” While a citizen might join any particular political association to support a “specific doctrine,” he or she learns there a more general “art of uniting with those like him to defend [his freedom]” at the very time when each has become “individually weaker” and “incapable in isolation of preserving his freedom” (DA, 489). Political associations form a “dike . . . against tyranny” of the centralized government or an oppressive democratic majority (DA, 184). They act analogously to powerful individuals in aristocratic nations: A political, industrial, commercial, or even scientific and literary association is an enlightened and powerful citizen whom one can neither bend at will nor oppress in the dark and who, in defending its particular rights against the exigencies of power, saves common freedoms. (DA, 668)

346

Ben Berger

Tocqueville differentiates between those political associations with a social element and those whose bond is “purely intellectual,” the latter apparently resembling what present-day scholars call “mailing list associations.”60 Only in those political associations where members meet personally can ideas and opinions be “the force and heat that written thought can never attain” (DA, 181). Tocqueville also implies that many political associations, being fundamentally insular and partisan, do not promote moral virtues such as generalized tolerance and mutual respect. Political associations can actually encourage moral disengagement because, as in France, sometimes members “profess the dogma of passive obedience” or make “the entire sacrifice of their judgment and their free will in a single stroke,” and this “very much diminishes their moral force” (DA, 186). This is not to say that political associations are immoral or amoral, or that political associations cannot involve moral engagement. But in general they do not “enlarge the heart” in the manner of nonpolitical, and often nonpartisan, civil associations. Indeed, Tocqueville only guardedly advocates freedom of political association. Political associations can promote democratic freedom, and forbidding them would harm associational life generally, but they bring problems along with benefits. Precisely because they are energetic and partisan sites of resistance, a bulwark against tyranny of the majority, they can also threaten stability and order. The degree of their utility depends on the larger societal context. Tocqueville finds political associations necessary and good in nineteenth-century America because Americans enjoy long-standing traditions of non-violent association and deliberation. Further, in America “opinions differ only by nuances” so violent struggles are (in general) uncommon (DA, 185). France, conversely, lacks America’s stable mores and traditions; there, political associations are viewed as catalysts to action and often violence, real threats to the political order. The political engagement of political associations may or may not support healthy democracy, depending on a nation’s prior resources and traditions. If nothing else, Tocqueville’s observations should chasten those contemporary political scientists who look to the American system as a model for developing democracies worldwide. Too often, contemporary political scientists and political theorists treat membership in political and social associations under the single rubric of “civic engagement,” as if it were all the same thing.61 Tocqueville, conversely, takes pains to distinguish between political and civil associations, with the latter encompassing “the associations that are formed in civil life and which have an object that is in no way political” (DA, 489). Many contemporary civic engagement scholars insist that participation in nonpolitical organizations stimulates political involvement and interest.62 They seldom realize that Tocqueville made that point first. He shows how civil

Metrosexual Manliness

347

associations can enlarge citizens’ moral as well as political perspective by bringing people together, emphasizing their commonality, and demystifying their differences. Civil associations are essential because “[s]entiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another” (DA, 491). Once citizens learn the art of associating for civil purposes they may put it to political uses: “civil associations therefore facilitate political associations; but on the other hand, political association singularly develops and perfects civil association” (DA, 496). However, civil associations can just as easily divert people’s attention and energy from political involvement.63 At their best, civil associations can stabilize society by developing the art of association while balancing the agitation of political associations. This much is clear: both political and civil associations are extremely important for democracies’ health. Political associations develop the art of selfgovernance, the love of liberty, and the ability to resist encroachments against it. Civil associations further promote the art of associating even as they divert some of society’s copious energy away from immediate investment in politics, thus “keep[ing] society on the move” without excessive political agitation or instability. If pressed to choose between the two, however, Tocqueville comes down firmly on the civil side. Political associations are key contributors in certain kinds of democratic environments, namely democracies with long traditions of stable, constitutional government and rule of law. Yet in newly democratizing countries political associations may undermine stability and promote civil chaos. Moreover, both stable and developing democracies could probably survive the loss of their political associations for quite a while, although they would likely suffer in the long run. But no democracy could endure the absence of civil associations’ transmission of cooperative norms and social connectedness. Tocqueville fears for “the morality and intelligence of a democratic people” if government were to crowd out private associations, but not if political associations were imperiled (DA, 491). At any rate, in Tocqueville’s United States both the political participation of township administration and political associations, and the social engagement of civil associations (which reciprocally reinforces political participation), keep citizens’ attention and energy focused on self-government. The perspective of self-interest well understood steers people toward that productive engagement and away from the corrosive individualism and isolation that can undermine democratic freedom. For these reasons American democracy resists, for the time being, the corrosive influences that Tocqueville glimpses more fully in his native France. Nonetheless, Tocqueville can only muster muted optimism about democracy in America, and even less than that about democracy in Europe. For all its merits, American democracy seems to represent an unstable equilibrium that might easily be tilted toward excessive inattention, enervation, and disengagement. Why?

348

Ben Berger

First, the township system that earns Tocqueville’s praise comprised only a fraction of American democracy. Tocqueville himself admits that “one must not extend indiscriminately to the whole Union what I say about New England” regarding public education and civic perspective (DA, 289). In Southern slaveholding states and in the sparsely populated Western territories he finds little of New England’s established civic habits and tastes, focused political attention, and usefully channeled energies.64 Indeed, in slaveholding Kentucky, the average citizen “has the tastes of idle men,” and since attention and energy follow tastes “he pursues fortune less than agitation and pleasure, and he applies in this direction the energy that his neighbor [in free Ohio] deploys elsewhere . . .” (DA, 333). Further, America’s West represents “democracy reaching its furthest limit,” with few social networks and no civic traditions. “The new states of the West already have inhabitants” but “society does not yet exist there” (DA, 50). Thus while many present-day political scientists quote only a few enthusiastic passages from Democracy in America praising Americans’ public-spiritedness and political engagement, they do not capture the entire picture. Second, even the civic-minded regions such as New England are marked by intense dedication to commerce and material gain. Excessive love of those pursuits threatens to crowd out civic attention and absorb all available energy, regardless of the religious influences that can sometimes keep materialism in check. In spite of civic traditions and norms of cooperation, if people love their private pursuits sufficiently they always flirt with the temptation to delegate public business to a professional bureaucracy and withdraw into their individual worlds. Finally, tastes change. Tocqueville’s Americans exhibit a strong taste for public life and political engagement. They find it a pleasurable diversion: To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure that an American knows . . . women themselves often go to political assemblies and, by listening to political discourses, take a rest from household tedium. For them, clubs replace theater-going to a certain point. (DA, 232)65

Elsewhere, Tocqueville tells us that “there are still only a few [Americans] who go [to the theater]” (DA, 468). We are left to wonder whether Americans’ civic attention is likely to survive once theater-going catches up with clubs and political assemblies in popular esteem and entertainment value.66 Do popular tastes comprise a sufficient hook on which to hang one’s hopes for enduring, widespread civic attention and ensuing civic activity? The answer is discouraging. In great detail Tocqueville chronicles the fickleness of popular tastes,67 and we can surmise that while at the time of his writing Americans comprised a remarkably engaged citizenry—both active in and attentive to treating “common problems in common”—he does not expect their tastes, attention, and hence energies to seek out public affairs forever:

Metrosexual Manliness

349

Not only do they [democratic citizens] not naturally have the taste to occupy themselves with the public, but often they lack the time to do it. Private life is so active in democratic times, so agitated, so filled with desires and work, that hardly any energy or leisure remains to each man for political life. (DA, 643)

In American democracy Tocqueville observes a relentless activity (“men never stay still”) encouraged by the relatively new, and sometimes overwhelming, impact of free choice and independence. Able to choose their occupations, business, and leisure pursuits Americans become jacks of many trades but masters of none.68 While political power or lasting fame may be out of the question, myriad material goods are not. The American “therefore does all things in haste,” and “he insists on knowing very quickly rather than on knowing well” (DA, 584). Of course, these limitations apply to politics as well as business and leisure pursuits. While Tocqueville famously praises Americans’ political participation, few scholars acknowledge this biting accompaniment: “their actions are often ill-considered because they give but little time and attention to each matter.” In fact, with remarkable prescience Tocqueville describes something like what we now call “information overload,” or the “sort of ignorance that is born of extreme publicity . . . in democratic nations [people] often act at random because one wanted to say everything to them.” Because attention is limited but political information is vast, “the principal features of each picture disappear for the latter among the multitude of details” (DA, 583). Tocqueville depicts a manic pace and shallow depth of daily life that could just as easily apply to today’s society, and he closes with the powerful but little-known pronouncement that “[t]he habit of inattention ought to be considered the greatest vice of the democratic mind” (DA, 584). Since Tocqueville strongly suggests that energy follows attention, political inattention threatens political lethargy. Thus, Tocqueville views the United States not as a model polity that will show the world how to avoid democracy’s perils but rather as an impressive but unstable balancing act. It stands in a tenuous equilibrium maintained (for the moment) by an interplay of culture, ideology, tastes, habits, and political institutions, all of which can change and hence upset the civic balance. Indeed, nine years after his initial visit to America Tocqueville ends volume II with the very same worries that had inaugurated volume I: lack of political attention, which he calls the “general apathy”; and a generalized enervation that could lead future democracies into despotism or anarchy. He writes, Both [license or tyranny, anarchy or despotism] are equally to be feared, and can as easily issue from one and the same cause, which is general apathy, the fruit of individualism . . . What it is important to combat is therefore much less anarchy or despotism than the apathy that can create the one or the other almost indifferently. (DA, 704)69

350

Ben Berger

The soft despotism of a “schoolmaster” government “hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies” inattentive individualists. So in spite of American democracy’s countervailing forces, the continual pull of individualism and isolation gives Tocqueville concern for its future prospects.70 Almost two centuries later, a glance at present-day political science scholarship shows these same worries hard at work. We are told that political participation and “social capital” are declining and that democracy might suffer as a consequence, with the apparent presumption that we were once better off.71 But Tocqueville helps us to understand that democracy has long struggled—and perhaps always will struggle—with the amount of energy that citizens dedicate to self-government and cooperative endeavors. Indeed, Tocqueville’s concept of “energy” (and his concern about its supply) lays the ground for Robert Putnam’s influential writings on “social capital.” At the individual level, energy is the most important ingredient of what economists and sociologists call “human capital.”72 Collective energy comprises a significant component of “social capital,” the accumulation of interpersonal connections that facilitate collective action. For Tocqueville, individual and collective energy can serve non-political functions, yet when necessary they can be channeled into political institutions and the processes of self-government. But the metaphor of “energy” has an added advantage over “capital” for helping us to think about democracy’s health because we can apply it to governments as well as to individuals and groups. Democracy requires an energetic citizenry but also an energetic government. Without the latter, democracy would fall to internal crises or external enemies; without the former, citizens would be at their government’s mercy. The same point is not so easily made using the “capital” metaphor. Tocqueville’s new political science also teaches us that energy and attention must be encouraged, limited, and channeled toward various cooperative projects, and sometimes toward self-government, but that a soft or feminine touch may elicit better results than forceful coercion. In our current mania to stem the tide of political apathy among the young, many middle schools and high schools are requiring so-called civic engagement from their students.73 Tocqueville supplies reasons to doubt the programs’ efficacy if not their sincerity, because they seek to attract energy and attention without “the free concurrence of [students’] wills.” Because “man is so made that he prefers standing still to marching without independence toward a goal of which he is ignorant,” such mandatory measures could, “without perceiving it, [drive] away the object of [their] covetousness . . .” (DA, 515, 87). If we take Tocqueville seriously we must take citizens’ tastes seriously as well, because quite often attention follows tastes (and energy follows attention). Rather than coercing attention and energy we can attempt to attract them to cooperative pursuits, including self-government, by appealing to people’s tastes. The trick, of course, is to make politics appealing but not tawdry or

Metrosexual Manliness

351

shallow to the point of meaninglessness. We might also provide greater incentives for satisfying participation, delegating more power to localities and hence helping local politics appeal to the “ambitious passions of the human heart” (DA, 64). And aside from eliciting additional attention and energy to politics and self-government, we might revise our political institutions so that they utilize and channel existing political attention and energy more efficaciously. The energy need not be manly or womanly as long as it is potent, pooled, and convertible into cooperative political activism or resistance when the need arises. Finally, if we take Tocqueville seriously we must take not only masculine but also feminine traits seriously as political virtues. Restraint, judgment, and respect for appropriate limitations, along with understated mastery that guides rather than dominates—all of which Tocqueville associates with women—might serve the home and hearth quite well, but we omit them from political life at our peril. Democracy without energy faces impotence and irrelevance at best, and submission to despotic masters at worst. But energetic democracy without restraint and judgment could end the world with a bang, not a whimper.74 As noted earlier, I am not making the ambitious claim that all citizens must combine masculine and feminine virtues within themselves; that might be asking for the impossible or even the inadvisable. Metrosexual manliness characterizes the combinations that political science must effect within, and apply to, society as a whole. Tocqueville’s democracy requires feminine as well as masculine virtues, and well-channeled energy from anyone who can provide it.

CONCLUSION Earlier I offered two justifications for my titular term, “metrosexual manliness.” Upon reflection I should add a third: its potentially controversial veneer might attract readers’ attention to deeper points underneath. Harvey Mansfield has taught many of us about the value of getting attention, at least those of us who have cared to reflect on his words. Teachers must be able to reach a wide range of students, conveying knowledge and techniques that everyone should possess, and then, with students whose tastes, habits, and abilities prompt deeper reflection, giving those few what they deserve as well. Metrosexual manliness is a silly concept that contains serious ideas. Democracy needs more energy, toughness, and moral courage, as well as more humanity, moderation, and moral restraint from its men and women. Which situations require which traits? From whom should we expect them? How will we elicit them? Answering those questions is the business of political philosophy and political science—or, at least, it should be.

352

Ben Berger

NOTES 1. Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 2. Cf. Sharon Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Andrew Sabl, Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Chad Noyes, “The Birth of Political Science” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2003); Berger, Attention Deficit Democracy and the End of Civic Engagement (forthcoming). 3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Hereafter cited in text as “DA” followed by page number. 4. Of course, Mansfield’s manliness describes an individual’s virtues, whereas my “metrosexual manliness” characterizes Tocqueville’s prescription for democracy’s health. 5. Paul McFedries defines a metrosexual as a straight man “who is not afraid to embrace his feminine side.” Paul McFedries, “Metrosexual,” The Word Spy, http://www.wordspy.com/words/metrosexual.asp (September 4, 2002). I use this sense of “metrosexual” rather than in the pejorative sense of a narcissist who dotes excessively on his appearance and lifestyle (which McFedries also associates with the term). 6. For Tocqueville’s energetic women see, for example, DA 566–67. He admires not only the “indomitable energy” of American women but the femininity with which they maintain and employ it (DA, 574). 7. William Shakespeare, Macbeth (New York: Pocket Books, 1959), I, v, 44–58. 8. Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene (New York: Penguin Classics, 1979), book III, canto XI, 471–76. 9. See, for example, Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1986); Benjamin Barber, A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); and Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 10. As one example of voluntary disengagement: Democratic citizens’ “habits and sentiments predispose them to recognize” a great central power and even “to lend it a hand.” Tocqueville continues, “[n]ot only do [democratic citizens] not naturally have the taste to occupy themselves with the public, but often they lack the time to do it. Private life is so active in democratic times, so agitated, so filled with desires and work, that hardly any energy or leisure remains to each man for political life” (DA, 643). 11. DA, 643. Tocqueville’s analyses of citizen disengagement and its causes are far too complex for simple encapsulation. I aim only to draw out those elements of Tocqueville’s analysis that connect citizen disengagement and atomization to difficulties with political attention, energy, and perspective. The limitations of those human capacities can explain sufficiently, albeit not exhaustively, why citizens might voluntarily disengage from politics and self-government at the risk of their own longterm interests 12. DA, 515. The context of this quote is Tocqueville’s admonition against excessive greed that can undermine material prosperity itself.

Metrosexual Manliness

353

13. Here I refer to the original French and include various forms of énergie, including énergique (energetic) and énergiquement (energetically). 14. Aristotle, De Anima, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell: Peripatetic Press, 1981), 412a22–8; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 1153a10. 15. For the struggle between thumos and eros consider, for example, the story of Leontius in Plato’s Republic. Leontius “noticed corpses lying by the public executioner. He desired to look, but at the same time he was disgusted and made himself turn away; and for a while he struggled and covered his face.” Even when he is “overpowered by the desire” he rebukes himself in shame. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 439e. 16. See Aristotle’s Politics on the relationship of thumos (or “spiritedness”) to politics and also freedom: “Both the element of ruling and the element of freedom stem from this capacity [thumos] for everyone: spiritedness is a thing expert at ruling and indomitable.” Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1328a5. 17. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, ed. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 173. Hereafter cited in the text as “OR” followed by page number. 18. “The most famous ancient republics had never admired a firmer courage, prouder souls, a more intractable love of independence than was then hiding in the wild woods of the New World” (DA, 25). See also DA, 322. 19. OR, 104: “. . . mais l’activité, l’énergie, le patriotisme communal, les vertus mâles et fécondes qu’elles ont inspirées ont disparu.” 20. DA, 574. To be fair, Tocqueville’s sentence concludes, “although they sometimes show themselves to be men in mind and heart.” But he intends this remark as a front-handed rather than backhanded compliment. 21. Joshua Mitchell also emphasizes the importance of motion in Tocqueville’s thought, although for wholly different reasons relating to the psychological effects of boundaries and restraints on people’s motion. Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 29–33. 22. DA, 332. While energy, movement, and freedom are intimately connected, the same holds true for the obverse combination (enervation, immobility, and the absence of freedom): “Man is so made that he prefers standing still to marching without independence toward a goal of which he is ignorant” (DA, 87). 23. For Arendt in “On Violence,” true power (as opposed to brute force) “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert . . . it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.” Hannah Arendt, Crises of the “Republic” (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 143. 24. “ . . . I cannot conceive that a nation can live, or above all prosper, without strong government centralization” (DA, 87–89). Of course, centralized government differs from centralized administration. The former consists of concentrating “certain interests . . . common to all parts of the nation . . . in the same place or under the same directing power.” The latter consists of concentrating “other interests special to certain parts of the nation, such as . . . the undertakings of the township.” Administrative centralization—remote, bureaucratic oversight of local interests and

354

Ben Berger

affairs—saps local energy, limits the experience of self-government, and dulls the taste for the experience of freedom. 25. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1961), no. 37, p. 226. Hereafter cited in the text as “Federalist.” 26. Tocqueville’s one exception: “. . . one will not make anyone believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever issue form the suffrage of a people of servants” (DA, 665). 27. Tocqueville’s writings on soft and harsh despotism strongly influenced Hannah Arendt, who writes that “the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may indeed, under certain circumstances, even turn out to be one of its cruelest and most tyrannical versions.” Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 40. 28. “It seems as if the French people were like those supposedly elementary particles inside which, the more closely it looks, modern physics keeps finding new particles” (OR, 161). 29. “Iron band” is Arendt’s term for the overly close compression that totalitarianism enforces; “mass society” is her term for atomized individuals. Both apply well to the social and political extremes that Tocqueville fears. 30. Joshua Mitchell expertly analyzes Tocqueville’s reliance upon religion to restrain democratic energy while maintaining democratic freedom. See Mitchell, Fragility, especially chapter 4 (“Christianity and Democracy”). 31. Cf. Emile Durkheim, Suicide (New York: Free Press, 1951), 252: “It is not true, then, that human activity can be released from all restraint. Nothing in the world can enjoy such a privilege . . . Man’s characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral . . .” See also Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005). Note that Tocqueville does not endorse state censorship of thought and expression, and he protests against the “tyranny of the majority” over the same. Apparently he considers religious strictures to be “salutary” because individuals can more easily defy or leave a religion than they can defy or leave their state or society. 32. “When, on leaving the agitations of the political world, the American returns to the bosom of his family, he immediately meets the image of order and peace. There, all his pleasures are simple and natural, his joys innocent and tranquil; and as he arrives at happiness through regularity of life, he becomes habituated to regulating his opinions as well as his tastes without difficulty” (DA, 279). 33. Aristotle, Politics, 1259b35. Of course, Aristotle does not himself consider women as active citizens. 34. Tocqueville’s stated purpose in Democracy in America is “to see not differently but further” (DA, 15). In the Old Regime he desires “to see into the heart of the old regime, so close to us in years, but hidden from us by the Revolution” (OR, 84). Further, on more than a dozen occasions in Democracy in America Tocqueville distinguishes what is apparent “at first glance” (“au premier coup d’œil”) and what turns out to be true upon more attentive analysis. 35. Note that France and the other European aristocracies that Tocqueville takes as his historical subjects—being based on inherited wealth and privilege rather than virtue or wisdom—surely do not represent aristocracy at its best (and leave us to

Metrosexual Manliness

355

wonder whether a “best” aristocracy is purely hypothetical). Tocqueville observes considerable corruption and pettiness in those societies, and with regard to the coming Revolution, he says that the French aristocrats suffered from a “strange blindness” because “their minds had frozen in their ancestors’ point of view” (OR, 198). I do not claim, or care to verify, that aristocratic perspective was ever as clear and far-reaching as Tocqueville occasionally suggests. I claim only that Tocqueville’s account of clear perspective enduringly describes the foresight and judgment that democracy needs but struggles to attain. 36. Tocqueville’s insights echo Hamilton’s: “the people always intend the public good, but they often mistake the means,” Federalist, no. 71, 432. Tocqueville quotes this very passage at length, DA, 144n. 37. Providing such perspective is one function of the “new political science” that “is needed for a world altogether new” (DA, 7). Tocqueville can look upon America with fresh eyes, unlike some of the chauvinistic Americans whose perspective is warped by their patriotic attachment. 38. “The doctrine of self-interest well understood seems to me of all philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our times . . . Even should [modern moralists] judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary” (DA, 503). 39. For Tocqueville’s observations regarding the American West, see DA, 50; for the South, see DA, 331–48. 40. Against such habitual blindness, or at least myopia, Tocqueville plays the role of Kent to the people’s King Lear: “See better, Lear, and let me still remain/ the true blank of thine eye.” William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), I.i, 169–70. 41. To recall Hamilton’s phrase, such an occurrence is “more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected” (Federalist, no. 1, 33). 42. “To choose to limit choice in this way might be called constitutionalizing or formalizing behavior.” Harvey C. Mansfield, America’s Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 143. 43. The limited scope of this project prevents a proper exposition of religion’s role in Tocqueville’s analysis. That job has been ably undertaken by many scholars, including Mitchell, Fragility, and Sanford Kessler, Tocqueville’s Civil Religion: American Christianity and the Prospects for Freedom (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). 44. In other words, while “One must . . . expect that individual interest will become more than ever the principal if not the unique motive of men’s actions,” still “it remains to know how each man will understand his individual interest” (DA, 503). 45. Tocqueville cites this old French maxim in OR, 199. Its message closely echoes Socrates’s observation of democratic excesses in the Republic: “too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for private man and city” (Plato, Republic, 564a). 46. In this regard Tocqueville follows Aristotle, whose Rhetoric addresses the nature and manipulability of attention. Aristotle writes that “all men are accustomed to devote their attention to what they like and admire,” and that, with regard to aural attention, “hearers pay most attention to things that are important, that concern

356

Ben Berger

their own interests, that are astonishing, that are agreeable . . .” Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2004), 5.15. 47. William James’s psychological theories also strongly support Tocqueville’s contentions: “No matter how scatterbrained the type of a man’s successive fields of consciousness may be, if he really cares for a subject, he will return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and last do more with it, and get more results from it, than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort.” William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Life’s Ideals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). 48. Consider Tocqueville’s comparison of Ohio and Kentucky, the former a free state and the latter a slave state where the ideal of labor has been devalued (DA, 333). 49. DA, 528. The public’s “regard” (les regards) here carries the sense of “attention,” as the Lawrence translation has it. In the Old Regime Tocqueville depicts the French royal court’s public appeal in the same manner, as a “brilliant” force that attracts public regard: “they were, in short, that which most struck contemporaries’ eyes and too often monopolizes posterity’s attention” (OR, 121). 50. Crises are especially dangerous during periods when citizens’ materialism has outstripped their civic education or perspective. At such times, “the exercise of [citizens’] political duties appears to them a distressing contretemps that distracts them from their industry . . . they cannot waste their precious time in useless work.” Rather than focusing their attention on threats to their liberty, preoccupied citizens are prone to cede their liberty to a designing individual or faction (DA, 515). 51. “. . . what seems to me most to be feared is that in the midst of the small incessant occupations of private life, ambition will lose its spark and its greatness; that human passions will be appeased and debased at the same time, so that each day the aspect of the social body becomes more tranquil and less lofty” (DA, 604). 52. DA, 419. The French is “elle tend à les isoler les uns des autres, pour porter chacun d’eux à ne s’occuper que de lui seul.” Tocqueville generally uses the verb s’occuper in the sense of occupying one’s own attention, so another way to render this passage is found in Henry Reeve’s translation: equality brings each citizen “to focus his attention on himself.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 53. Elsewhere, analyzing the democratic danger of military coups, Tocqueville blames “the love of material enjoyments and taste for well-being that equality naturally suggests to men,” which is naturally opposed to energy, to “virile mores,” and is “antipathetic to the military spirit . . .” Were the nation to become thus softened, “the army would take up its arms without ardor and would use them without energy . . .” (DA 702, note XXIII). 54. Cf. Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Ilya Somin, “Voter Ignorance and the Democratic Ideal,” Critical Review 12 (4) (1998): 413–58. 55. Rational choice theory specifies that “in acting rationally, an actor is engaging in some kind of optimization,” which may be construed as “maximizing utility.” James S. Coleman and Thomas J. Fararo, Rational Choice Theory: Advocacy and Critique, ed. James S. Coleman and Thomas J. Fararo (Newbury Park: Sage, 1992), xi.

Metrosexual Manliness

357

56. When Tocqueville writes that “the New England township unites two advantages that, everywhere they are found, keenly excite men’s interest; that is to say: independence and power,” he uses the term “interest” (l’intérêt) in the sense of “attention” or “regard.” The township’s advantages appeal to people’s desires and hence excite their attention (DA, 63–64). 57. Almond and Verba’s classic study of citizen engagement employs the term “subjective competence” to describe citizens’ self-confidence and perceptions of political efficacy: “a subjectively competent citizen . . . is more likely to be an active citizen.” Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 182. See also Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 346–47. 58. “One is occupied with the general interest at first by necessity and then by choice; what was calculation becomes instinct; and by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow citizens, one finally picks up the habit and taste of serving them” (DA, 488). Note that “by necessity” does not mean “by coercion”; citizens serve the public interest because they need each other. 59. “In democracies the people, constantly occupied as they are with affairs and jealous of their rights, prevent their representatives from deviating from a general line indicated by their interests” (DA, 233). The experience of political engagement not only keeps political attention alerted to possible encroachments; additionally, the occasional disorders of public life, “the little shocks that freedom continually gives the most secure societies,” keeps political attention focused and “keep[s] awake public prudence” against long-term threats to self-government (OR, 199). 60. See Theda Skocpol, “The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy,” Social Science History 21 (4) (Winter 1997): 455–79. 61. Cf. Putnam, Bowling Alone; and Theda Skocpol and Morris P.Fiorina, Civic Engagement in American Democrcy (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 62. Cf. Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality, 79. 63. In some cases, civil associations “instead of directing the minds of citizens toward public affairs . . . serve to distract them and, engaging them more and more in projects that cannot be accomplished without public peace, turn them away from revolutions” (DA, 499). 64. Contrasting the effects of “freedom and servitude,” Tocqueville finds that on the Kentucky banks of the Ohio River “one would say that society is asleep; man seems idle.” But on the Kentucky side “rises a confused noise that proclaims from afar the presence of industry . . . man appears rich and content: he works” (DA, 331–32). 65. Similarly, regarding American associational life around the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Putnam and Gerald Gamm speculate that small and mediumsized cities were the sites of many civic associations because they lacked other entertainment options. Gamm and Putnam, “The Growth of Voluntary Associations in America, 1840–1940,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (4) (Spring 1999): 549. 66. Benjamin Franklin, recounting the success of his early lending library, stresses the absence of competing attractions for the people’s attention: “ . . . reading became fashionable; and our people, having no public amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observed

358

Ben Berger

by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.” Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography and Other Works (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 13–15. 67. For example: “The Anglo-Americans . . . admit that what seems good to them today can be replaced tomorrow by the better that is still hidden” (DA, 359). 68. “As he cannot know them all well, he is easily satisfied with imperfect notions” (DA, 584). 69. When Tocqueville writes, in this footnote, of l’apathie générale he is referring to the condition of “an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others . . .” (DA, 663). Such a condition is exactly what I have been calling a lack of political attention and hence perspective. 70. “During my stay in the United States I had remarked that a democratic social state like that of the Americans could singularly facilitate the establishment of despotism . . .” (DA, 661). 71. Cf. Putnam, Bowling Alone; and Stephen Macedo et. al., Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2005). 72. James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology, Supplement (1994): S95–S120. Putnam has attributed the term “social capital” to Coleman. 73. Echoing Williams James’s 1908 manifesto on national service, Senator Christopher Dodd recently proposed that mandatory community service be instituted in high schools nationwide. Holly Ramer, “Dodd Urges Mandatory Community Service,” June 23, 2007, Associated Press, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wire Story?id=3309445. 74. Cf. T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men (“This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper”) which I invert here. T. S. Eliot, Poems, 1909–1925 (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1926).

17 Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties” Bryan Garsten

“The difference between ancient and modern party politics is that in modern party politics the people have won.” “ . . . the Christian sect controls the popular party.” —Harvey C. Mansfield, “Party and Sect in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories”1

At the end of the introduction to Democracy in America Tocqueville described the perspective from which he was writing: This book is not precisely in anyone’s camp; in writing it I did not mean either to serve or to contest any party; I undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties; and while they are occupied with the next day, I wanted to ponder the future.2

The main purpose of the passage was to emphasize the fact that none of the existing political parties in France adequately represented Tocqueville’s point of view. The parties still reflected Revolutionary politics. They were heirs either to the Jacobins, unapologetically promoting the expansion of democracy without concern for its dangers, or to the counter-revolutionary forces, actively opposing the spread of democracy. Tocqueville thought the first position was foolish and the second was futile, and he took both parties to task for their shortsightedness. From the perspective of political philosophy, however, the most striking and significant part of the passage is the phrase “not differently.” With those

359

360

Bryan Garsten

words Tocqueville emphasized a certain respect for the positions and principles that are found within the claims of partisans, and so distinguished his approach from the social contract tradition of the early moderns. In contrast to Hobbes, Locke, and their followers, Tocqueville did not ask his readers to imagine what society would be like prior to politics, and he did not suggest that they judge the legitimacy of their government by asking whether pre-political individuals could or should have agreed to submit to it. There is no state of nature in Tocqueville, nor anything like Rawls’s veil of ignorance. There is no effort to imagine a perspective outside the political one and no program to construct or find an Archimedean point that philosophy or science could provide and on which a more stable politics could be built. Tocqueville’s approach suggests that it is not necessary to adopt such philosophical contrivances, and perhaps even that it is possible and desirable to return to something like the classical approach to political philosophy, an approach that began with, and took seriously, the claims of political partisans.3 But what are the presuppositions of adopting, or returning to, an approach to political science that begins with the partisan arguments we find in politics? And what exactly do we see when we try to see “not differently” from the parties? These are the questions that this essay will investigate. The main point to be proposed is that neither of these questions can be answered without looking carefully at how partisan points of view are related to religion. In Democracy in America, the issue of religion’s relation to politics turns out to be more complicated than is often allowed. Religion, we shall see, is not simply a moral support from outside democratic politics; it is not immune to the influence of the democratic revolution. In fact, religion in America is both dependent on and supportive of the new authority put in place by that revolution, the authority of the people. What I want to suggest is that religion’s alliance with popular authority is what makes it possible to return to an approach to politics that is not different from the partisan one. But religion’s presence—or, more specifically, Christianity’s presence—also changes the parties that we find when we attend to politics, and changes them so deeply as to make a true return to classical political thought impossible. For Tocqueville, seeing “not differently” from the parties revealed something fundamentally different from what it had revealed to Aristotle. Tocqueville offered “a new political science” because he thought that the world was “altogether new” (DA 1.Intro., 7). *** Why did Tocqueville not feel bound by the imperatives that had compelled the early moderns to try to imagine a perspective that was different from that of the various partisans? The most important of those imperatives was

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

361

the fact that political parties had been closely tied to religious sects. As long as parties were sects, and sects of a monotheistic, creedal, Salvationist religion, it was thought to be difficult to admit more than one of them into politics without giving rise to intractable controversy and civil war. Thus Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and their followers sought to find a basis of political life that was wholly distinct from the bases offered by the sectarian partisans. To see like the parties was, for these early moderns, to see politics through the lens of the theological parties, each of which brought to politics a distinct understanding of divine right. The view from the perspective of the parties or sects was one in which questions of papacy, episcopacy, and conscience were central. To see differently from the parties was to insist that these matters no longer be regarded as foundational in politics; it was to insist upon a distinction between religious and political argument and so to undermine the political claims of religious sectarians. If we associate the project of seeing “differently” from the parties with the early modern desire to separate religion and politics, we reach what may at first seem to be a surprising conclusion—that Tocqueville, in trying to see “not differently” from the parties, opposed the separation of religion and politics. It is true that he praised the American practice of separating church and state. But he praised that institutional separation as a means of doing what Europe had not managed to do, which was to make “the spirit of religion” compatible with “the spirit of freedom,” to see how these two could be “incorporated into one another” and “combined marvelously” (DA 1.1.2, 43). Tocqueville tried to show how each spirit accommodated the other in America, but the need for accommodation and combination suggests the impossibility of a full separation. No full separation is possible because man is whole; there is a natural human tendency to make one’s religious opinions compatible with one’s political opinions, “to harmonize the earth with Heaven” (DA I.2.9, 275). The fact that no full separation between the two realms is possible means that religion must be modified to accommodate democratic government. To suggest that we can modify religion for political purposes—that religion can be viewed and even shaped to be a “political institution”—is to suggest that we have the authority to make such modifications. In democracies we do not doubt that we have this authority because we accept the reigning dogma of the “omnipotence of the people.” In doing so, we raise questions about the authority of the power that had traditionally been presumed to be omnipotent. How exactly are these two omnipotent authorities reconciled in Tocqueville’s account? This is the fundamental question that arises when trying to combine the spirit of religion with the spirit of freedom. Tocqueville answered the question not with abstract theory, but instead by showing how the two spirits had in fact been made compatible in the exemplary case of America.

362

Bryan Garsten

One view of religion’s place in the American democratic society holds that religion is an inheritance from aristocratic times that offers ethical guidance and restraint to democratic citizens who would otherwise find themselves adrift without horizons or a moral compass. This view is incomplete, but it is an important part of Tocqueville’s account of religion. He argued that religion might help temper the tyranny of the majority by limiting what citizens imagine: “At the same time that the law permits the American people to do everything, religion prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare everything” (DA 1.2.9, 280). His account reveals that majority rule, the principle of the sovereignty of the people, is a merely formal principle; it does not tell us what to do with our sovereignty. Religion offers substance to complement the formal principle. Religion tells us how to use our freedom, or at least how not to use it. While everything seems uncertain and undetermined in the political world, religion ensures that things seem fixed and certain in the moral world (DA 1.2.9, 279). Through its effects on women and the family, especially, religion influences habits of thought and feeling. It offers a moral and intellectual orientation that helps to order souls and prevents democratic citizens from becoming disoriented by the flux that accompanies the freedom to judge every belief for oneself. In a famous letter from later in his life, Tocqueville described the uncertainty that he had personally felt once he had begun to question his faith, and he likened that uncertainty to an earthquake in his soul.4 Thus there is certainly truth in the idea that he valued religion for its ability to offer moral guidance and stability. Religion is an “aristocratic inheritance” (DA 2.2.15, 519) that inculcates “habits of restraint” (DA 1.2.9, 279) and acts as “a salutary yoke” (DA 2.1.5, 418). But the matter of religion’s relation to democracy cannot be left at that. Consider what may be the most often quoted passage on this theme from Democracy in America: Despotism can do without faith, but freedom cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic they [republicans] extol than in the monarchy they attack, and in democratic republics more than all others. How could society fail to perish if, while the political bond is relaxed, the moral bond were not tightened? And what makes a people master of itself if it has not submitted to God? (DA 1.2.9, 282)

The formulation of the final question—what makes a people master of itself if it has not submitted to God?—points to the insufficiency of the account we have given so far. For that formulation leaves it unclear who is, in fact, the final authority. Is it the people, who Tocqueville calls “master,” or God, who is “submitted to”? What the account of religion as an authority outside of democratic politics does not explain is how democratic citizens are meant to reconcile that authority with their own.5

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

363

A crucial argument at the beginning of the second volume suggests why the authority of the democratic public cannot simply be dismissed or subordinated. The democratic citizen, an unknowing student of Descartes, is committed to doubting the authority of any other individual and the authority of tradition and religion; public opinion is the only authority he can accept. A life without authority, or without beliefs accepted on authority (dogmas), is not one that Tocqueville thought was livable. We have neither the time nor the ability to examine for ourselves every belief on which we act. Still, insofar as we are modern, democratic individuals, we cannot accept beliefs on the authority of anyone else, including, most especially, those who claim to speak for God. Thus public opinion, which we can bow to without seeming to sacrifice our own authority, becomes the only acceptable source of the dogmas we need to live (DA 2.1.1–2). How, then, can we understand Tocqueville when he claims, just a few pages later, that dogmas in the matter of religion are the most valuable of all? It seems that there are two sources of dogmatic authoritative belief: public opinion and religion. How do they relate to one another? A quick and almost flip answer is to simply say that democracies turn public opinion into a kind of religion. There is some truth to this: “Faith in common opinion will become a sort of religion whose prophet will be the majority” (DA 2.1.2, 410). But the metaphorical religion of public opinion is different from the actual religion, Christianity, that is supposed to place limits on public opinion. If religion were nothing more than public opinion then it would not seem to have the ability to restrain public opinion from the outside. To investigate this problem it helps to pay close attention to Tocqueville’s account of the concrete particulars in America. He raised the issue of how the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom fit together when he discussed the Puritan democracy of the early settlements in New England. He had found in archives examples of the Puritans’ harsh and invasive laws, and noticed that legislators in Connecticut “conceived the strange idea of drawing from sacred texts.” He cited laws that the Puritans had drawn from Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus (DA 1.1.2, 38). He noticed laws not only against adultery and rape but also against using tobacco; there had even been strong norms against growing one’s hair too long. He cited a judgment rendered on May 1, 1660, in New Haven, Connecticut, against a young woman accused and convicted of “having pronounced some indiscreet words and of having allowed herself to be given a kiss” (DA 1.1.2, 38). Such laws, he wrote, “constantly penetrate into the domain of conscience, and there is almost no sin that does not fall subject to the censure of the magistrate” (DA 1.1.2, 38). From Tocqueville’s account, it is unclear what the basis of authority for these laws was. Did they rest on the authority of divine revelation, or on the

364

Bryan Garsten

authority of the popular consent that converted them from biblical to civil laws? Did these laws demonstrate the only sort of authority that would ever be strong enough to restrain the people from tyrannizing over the majority? Or were they simply examples of the tyranny of the majority? Among the Puritans, religion and public opinion were so closely intertwined that it is difficult to distinguish the authority of God from that of the people. This is not an accidental feature of Tocqueville’s account, for he emphasized precisely this ambiguity even as he pointed toward a way of resolving it: “One must not lose sight of the fact that these bizarre or tyrannical laws were not imposed; that they were voted by the free concurrence of all the interested persons themselves . . . ” (DA 1.1.2, 39). The laws were “tyrannical” yet “not imposed.” This would suggest that they are best interpreted as the people tyrannizing over itself, or as tyranny of the majority. And yet these laws were religious, and so sprung from the force that was supposed to prevent such tyranny. It seems that religion understood as a check on the people was not particularly effective even in the Puritan settlements, where the influence of religion would have been the strongest. Of course one might think that the relation between religion and politics would be quite different in Andrew Jackson’s America, the America that Tocqueville visited, the America famous for having separated church and state. But Tocqueville indicated otherwise. “From the beginning (le principe), politics and religion were in accord, and they have not ceased to be so since,” he wrote (DA 1.2.9, 275). He insisted that the Puritans offered the point of departure for understanding later America. When speaking of the power of public opinion in democracies in general he noted that “if one looks very closely, one will see that religion itself reigns there much less as revealed doctrine than as common opinion” (DA 2.1.2, 409). The implication is that the authority for even religious mores comes from their endorsement by the public. With this in mind, it is interesting to notice that when Tocqueville praised the separation of church and state, what he emphasized was the tendency of American priests to refrain from trying to gain political office or influence partisan politics: American priests . . . take care to keep themselves outside affairs and do not mix in the schemes of the parties. (DA 1.2.9, 278) I saw them [the priests] separate themselves carefully from all parties, and avoid contact with them with all the ardor of personal interest. (DA 1.2.9, 283)

Tocqueville did not hesitate to say why the priests were so careful to avoid political involvement. They had no choice, because they lacked the authority to challenge public opinion: All American priests know the intellectual empire the majority exercises and respect it. They never support any but necessary struggles against it. They do not

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

365

mix in the quarrels of the parties, but they willingly adopt the general opinions of their country and time, and they let themselves go without resistance in the current of sentiments and ideas that carries away all things around them. (DA 2.1.5, 423–24)

American priests recognized that no one could oppose the sovereignty of the people in a democracy. Religion remained strong in America because these priests took care not to act against habits of mind that were characteristic of democratic public opinion; even Catholic priests turned away from any effort to govern (DA 1.2.9, 276). Tocqueville praised this stance, and recommended that all partisans of religion follow it. He suggested that priests exercise self-restraint and conform to the demands of democratic sentiment as much as possible. Religions in democratic societies should strip themselves of as much formality and ceremony as possible. While they should try to take the edge off of materialism, they should not try too hard to counter it, and in general they should be aware of their very limited ability to successfully oppose democratic sentiments. In general, they should “not collide unnecessarily with the generally accepted ideas and permanent interests that reign among the mass; for common opinion appears more and more as the first and most irresistible of powers; there is no support outside of it strong enough to permit long resistance to its blows” (DA 2.1.5, 423). It seems that religion’s ability to counter the inclinations of the democratic mind are severely circumscribed by the necessity to preserve itself using the sort of authority that democratic citizens can accept. “One cannot deny,” Tocqueville wrote in a one-sentence paragraph, “that Christianity itself has in some fashion come under the influence exerted over religious beliefs by the social and political state” (DA 2.1.5, 420). The separation of church and state seems to be a sign of how religion has accommodated itself to the rule of the people. The effectual truth of the separation of church and state is that priests defer to public opinion. The omnipotence of the people is not questioned even by the representatives of the omnipotent God. When the American people subject themselves to religion, then, they do so because religion has made itself compatible with their own authority. If pressed, we would have to admit that the people’s submission to religion is more accurately described as submission to themselves, or to a part of themselves that they label “religion.” It is true that Tocqueville remarked upon the great power, especially the indirect power, of religion in American society. He went so far as to say that America was “the place in the world where the Christian religion has most preserved genuine powers over souls” (DA 1.2.9, 278). But the power that it has preserved was described by Tocqueville as the power to instill, through mores and through the women who teach them, habits of self-restraint. Religion as self-restraint is religion shorn of otherworldly content, religion made a matter of morals alone.

366

Bryan Garsten

Even the American priests sent to the Western frontier to spread religion did not understand their mission primarily as one about the next life, according to Tocqueville. “If you interrogate these missionaries of Christian civilization,” he says, “you will be altogether surprised to hear them speak so often of the goods of this world, and to find the political where you believe you will see only the religious” (DA 1.2.9, 281). The political virtue of selfrestraint is the state of being a master of oneself; it is the opposite of submitting to an external master. The Americans used the religious idea of submission or heteronomy to teach themselves the art of freedom or autonomy, and so they turned the religious idea against itself. All parties in America accept the sovereignty of the people, so a religion that accommodates itself to that doctrine will not make the mistake of allying itself with just one party, as Catholicism had in France. That sort of alliance of party and church, or of throne and altar, was what Tocqueville thought had given rise to the anti-religious fervor of revolutionary France. He argued that the unbelievers there “hate faith as the opinion of a party much more than as an erroneous belief; and it is less the representative of God that they repel in the priest than the friend of power” (DA 1.2.9, 287–88). The American separation of church and state, as seen in the self-restraint of the priests, was a remedy for the problems that religion finds when it allies itself with a political party in this way. But the separation of church and state, and the apparent neutrality of religion with respect to the parties, arose in America in large part from the fact that all parties there were more or less popular. All the parties recognized, to a lesser or greater degree, the authority of the people. When priests deferred to that same authority, then, they did not ally themselves with one or the other of the parties. It is therefore important that public opinion is, in Tocqueville’s analysis, one rather than many. The unity of public opinion means that when religious sects accommodate themselves to it, they thereby make themselves compatible with one another. In spite of the apparent diversity of sects in America, there is in fact only one fundamental approach to religion: “All the clergy there hold to the same language; opinions are in accord with the laws, and there reigns so to speak only a single current in the human mind” (DA 1.2.9, 277). All the sects agree on the duties men have toward one another, and all preach the same morality. In this context Tocqueville can assert, even against the long history of sectarian violence in Europe, that “the morality of Christianity is everywhere the same” (DA 1.2.9, 278). The key word is “morality”; Christianity has been reduced to morality precisely so as to render it amenable to democratic society. The emphasis on morality is related to a process of abstraction that is necessary to tame sects and render them compatible. It is striking that Tocqueville wrote most often of “religion,” a general term encompassing all sects, rather than naming particular sects or religions. In doing so he was following the Americans themselves.

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

367

“In the United States,” wrote Tocqueville when trying to explain the character of partisan politics there, “there is no religious hatred because religion is universally respected and no sect is dominant” (DA 1.2.2, 169). To respect “religion” rather than a particular religion is to adopt a curiously abstract object of respect, similar to those commentators today who argue on behalf of “values” without specifying which values they support, as if the content were less important than the simple fact of having any values at all. The assumption of this point of view is that the difference between religion and irreligion is greater than the difference between any two religious sects. The abstract term “religion” is itself, in its inclusiveness, more tolerant than many particular sects are. This abstract and tolerant view of religions arises from a particular vantage point: “Although Christians in America are divided into a multitude of sects, they all perceive their religion in the same light” (DA 2.1.5, 423). That light is the one provided by the democratic revolution, a social and political development that has made the plural “sects” into the singular “religion” by subjecting them to the unified authority of public opinion. By providing this new source of unified authority and thereby freeing political parties from their direct entanglement with religious sects, the democratic revolution seems to have found a way of producing the result that Hobbes wished for—a politics purged of sectarianism—without the need for an authoritarian external sovereign. Instead, the democratic revolution made the people sovereign, and the idea of popular sovereignty was enough to create a type of rule, or non-rule, that is not essentially different from Hobbes’s indirect government. Parties under democracy compete over who represents the people’s will rather than over who represents God’s will; they become fundamentally popular rather than theological.6 Of course, the parties may represent opinions that are shaped by religion, but they represent those opinions because they are the public’s opinions, not because they are divine or because they are right. The parties pay homage more to the public than to anything above it. If religion is to influence democratic politics, it must do so indirectly, which means that it must do so not on the authority of the vox Dei but on that of the vox populi. And insofar as the democratic revolution thereby achieves Hobbes’s goal without resorting to his methods, it eliminates the need for the early modern project of trying to see differently from the parties. *** What do we see when we try to see “not differently” from the parties? To answer this question we need first to identify which parties we will begin our political analysis with. Tocqueville’s analysis of parties focused on “great” parties, those that were rooted in principles rather than interests or personalities.

368

Bryan Garsten

When Edmund Burke had defended the respectability of party government in his pamphlet Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, he had premised his defense on the fact that “the great parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved.” Burke’s remark suggested “that the dissolution of the great parties was necessary to the respectability of parties. It could not be respectable to join a party, much less to join different parties, until the parties had resolved these mortal issues.”7 Tocqueville’s analysis did not contradict this insight of Burke’s. The “great parties” that Tocqueville admired were not the sectarian parties whose dissolution Burke mentioned. Instead they were those parties that competed about matters of purely political principle, as when the Federalists debated the Republicans in the founding years of the American republic. The matter of principle that Tocqueville believed was just beneath the surface in these debates was the question of whether to expand or contract the public power. In democracies, the public power is controlled by the people. This means that debate between the great parties was in effect a dispute between those who wanted to give more power to the people—the democrats—and those who wanted to restrain the people—the aristocrats. Democracy and aristocracy are the two great parties of modern politics, and they offer perspectives that are so fundamentally different that by the end of the second volume Tocqueville referred to them as “two distinct humanities” (DA 2.4.8, 675). In making the perspectives of these parties central to his analysis of America’s politics, Tocqueville suggested that once religious sectarianism is suppressed or surpassed, the fundamental political alternatives are revealed to be rule by the few and rule by the many. Once the influence of Christianity is stripped away, the political options identified by classical political philosophy show themselves to still be relevant. This explains why Tocqueville’s political thought may seem ready to return us to something like a classical or Aristotelian perspective on politics.8 But there is an important distinction between Tocqueville’s perspective and Aristotle’s. A hint of this distinction can be seen in Tocqueville’s observation that the Federalists could never have maintained power for very long: “The Federalists struggled against the irresistible inclination of their century and of their country. Whatever their goodness or vice, their theories were wrong in being inapplicable in their entirety to the society they wanted to rule; what happened under Jefferson would therefore have happened sooner or later” (DA 1.2.2, 168–69). The Federalists were, as the aristocratic party, fighting against history. The democrats had the wind of history at their backs. Moreover, Tocqueville’s view of “history” had special force because it was providential. The coming of democracy was a “providential fact”; to try to work against it was to “struggle against God himself.” The democratic revolution was not something universal but something happening “in all the Christian uni-

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

369

verse” (DA 1.Intro., 6–7), and the ultimate source of the belief in equality could be found in the coming of Jesus Christ (DA 2.1.3, 413). Thus in Tocqueville’s analysis, God and history take sides in the partisan dispute between few and many; God is on the side of the democrats. The partisanship of providential history cannot help but inflect any effort to see “not differently” from the parties. The task of working out the arguments implicit in each party’s claim about justice from a philosophical perspective informed by, but outside of, both partisan perspectives, the task undertaken in Aristotle’s Politics, presumes that aristocracy and democracy are equally possible and plausible answers to the question of who should rule. It presumes that there is an argument to be made for each partisan perspective, and that the political scientist or philosopher can bring out these arguments and put them to use in constructing a form of government that does some justice to both parties’ claims. In Tocqueville, however, providential history turns the aristocratic argument into a nostalgic one. Political science must recognize facts, including the fact that our age is the age of democracy. This is why Tocqueville regarded the project of constructing a mixed regime that was equally sensitive to the claims of aristocrats and democrats as a misguided one. “The government called mixed has always seemed to me to be a chimera,” he wrote. “There is, to tell the truth, no mixed government because in each society one discovers in the end one principle of action that dominates all the others” (DA 1.2.7, 240). Those who notice that the few are always contesting against the many should also notice, Tocqueville pointed out, that the many usually win these contests. Had they noticed that, they would have seen the trend so vividly outlined in the introduction to the book, a trend in which Tocqueville claimed one could see the will of God himself: “It is not necessary that God himself speak in order for us to discover sure signs of his will.” His book was written in the presence of the divine sign that history offers; it was an effort to interpret that sign. It seems to go too far to say that the book was a work of prophecy, yet like the prophets of old, Tocqueville wrote his message “under the pressure of a sort of religious terror in the author’s soul” (DA 1.Intro., 6). Tocqueville admitted, in a striking passage near the end of the second volume, that he could only appreciate democratic equality by trying to adopt the perspective of God himself: When the world was filled with very great and very small men, very rich and very poor, very learned and very ignorant, I turned my regard away from the second and attached it only to the first, and these delighted my view; but I understand that this pleasure was born of my weakness: it is because I cannot see all that surrounds me at the same time that I am permitted to choose in this way and to set apart among so many objects those it pleases me to contemplate. It is not the same with the all-powerful and eternal Being whose eye

370

Bryan Garsten

necessarily envelops the sum of things and who sees distinctly, though at once, the whole human race and each man. It is natural to believe that what most satisfies the regard of this creator and preserver of men is not the singular prosperity of some, but the greatest wellbeing of all: what seems to me decadence is therefore progress in his eyes; what wounds me is agreeable to him. Equality is perhaps less elevated; but it is more just, and its justice makes for its greatness and its beauty. I strive to enter into this point of view of God, and it is from there that I seek to consider and judge human things. (DA 2.4.8, 674–75)

It may be tempting to see this aspiration to take a divine point of view as a departure from the intention to see “not differently” from the parties. The partisan perspective seems to be down in the midst of political life, while the divine perspective Tocqueville claims to aspire to is far above that life.9 But if we take seriously the partisan affiliations of Tocqueville’s God, the two passages are not in tension with one another; seeing like God is necessary to seeing not differently from the democratic party. The tension between philosophical detachment and political engagement is not the most fundamental tension in Tocqueville’s position. The more fundamental conflict running through Democracy in America is that between the two parties themselves, between the democratic love of equality and the aristocratic love of greatness, between the divine Christian understanding of justice and the human, all too human, understanding of nobility. The real puzzle in understanding how Tocqueville could undertake to see “not differently” from the parties is how he sought to see like both of these two distinct humanities at once, how he could see the claim of both the just and the noble without letting either one be assimilated into the other or lost from view. In particular, how are we to understand all the aristocratic elements of Tocqueville’s perspective, given his emphasis on the fact that we inhabit a democratic time? If the goal is not to construct a mixed regime, which is a “chimera,” then how should we understand the function of those aristocratic institutions and practices in American democracy that Tocqueville argued were so important to its success, such as lawyers with their “aristocratic character” (DA 1.2.8, 254), rights which are “taken from the English aristocracy” (DA 2.4.4, 648), religion which is “the most precious inheritance from aristocratic centuries” (DA 2.2.15, 519), and so on? Why would we need to see like the aristocratic party in a time when such a party is struggling “against the irresistible inclination of its century?” If a mixed regime is unavailable, it would seem that these aristocratic elements of politics can only be preserved in the modern age if they become not external checks upon, but instead a part of, democracy. Though their histories may be aristocratic and their effect on citizens may be to instill something not wholly different from aristocratic virtue, these aristocratic remainders must

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

371

find a new raison d’être in a democratic age; they must somehow serve democracy itself. Tocqueville’s argument was that some aristocratic practices and habits are necessary to preserve individuals as particular individuals, to prevent them from disappearing into the philosophical abstractions of “popular sovereignty” or “the individual.” Democracy presupposes the existence and agency of particular individuals if it is to remain something distinct from despotism, because only the sense of one’s unique importance or honor can spur citizens to risk comfort for the sake of liberty.10 And yet insofar as democracy fosters an appreciation for equality and for the good of the whole, it risks leading people to forget and forsake their importance as individuals. Thus democracy threatens to undermine one precondition of its own existence. The new rationale that certain aristocratic practices find in democracy is that of protecting democratic citizens from a latent tendency to forget their individual importance. Moreover, we have seen that democracy is, in Tocqueville’s account, closely linked to Christianity, which is the moral source of the belief in equality. The self-neglect we find in democratic citizens is a problem for Christianity as well. The dilemma can be seen most clearly in the way that Tocqueville’s discussion of Catholicism led into his discussion of pantheism. Tocqueville claimed, in what must have seemed a surprising argument to his French readers, that Catholicism was friendly to democracy. The reason he gave was that Catholicism was conducive to a belief in equality, since it taught that all men were equally insignificant in the eyes of God: “The priest alone is raised above the faithful: everything is equal below him” (DA 1.2.9, 276). In the Catholic system there is only one exception to equality— God himself, along with his representatives. This exception stands above the mass of equal men, and might be seen as an affront to their equality. This is why priests in America have to avoid politics. Their special prerogative would not be tolerated in that sphere. They would be like the men of superior virtue in Aristotle’s analysis, who must either rule or be ostracized.11 The mere existence of these superiors serves as an unwelcome reminder of natural or divinely sanctioned inequality. But the priests’ existence is only an effort to represent the existence of God, so in fact it is God’s existence that is an affront to equality. The monotheistic God is a singular and superior entity; to appreciate him it is necessary to have a certain tolerance for singularity and superiority. “I am the Lord your God” seems to the democratic ear a haughty statement of hierarchical self-assertion. It is a sentiment that an aristocrat can understand and admire but one that is naturally distasteful to the democratic mind. Tocqueville’s chapter on Catholicism was immediately followed by the chapter on why democratic peoples incline toward pantheism. Pantheism, the belief that the divine can be found in all of nature, is a way of denying God’s singularity and subjecting

372

Bryan Garsten

the divine to the democratic demand for equality. It is not so much God or the divine that the democratic mind rejects, but the distinction and hierarchy that the existence of God reminds us of. But if it turns out that the Christian love of equality is what leads us to target God and seek to diffuse him into nature, then it would seem that there is a sense in which Christianity is the source of its own demise. Christian egalitarianism is in danger of dethroning its own god and dissolving itself into pantheism. Democracy, on this view, is the working out of the Christian idea but also the dissolution of it. To save Christianity from itself, it would be necessary to save the particular and the singular, to defend our ability to respect the haughtiness and self-assertion of the biblical God. There is a reason that we capitalize His name—can the democratic mind bear to acknowledge such superiority and singularity? Only if a certain aristocratic appreciation of particularity can be made a part of the democratic mind. The aristocratic party’s way of seeing would have to be turned to Christian and democratic purposes, recruited to help to save Christianity and democracy from their own tendencies. This is why even a political science that orients itself with regard to the providential fact that democracy is ascendant must not restrict itself to seeing only from a democratic perspective, why it must try to see not differently than the parties, in the plural. To see not differently than the parties, both parties, means to see and appreciate both the particular and the general without letting either obscure the other. Democratic historians accent general ideas and structural forces, while aristocratic historians emphasize the role of leading individuals and heroes. Democratic poets emphasize the beauty of the abstract while aristocratic poets adorn and appreciate particular details. How is it possible to see both the general and the particular? In the long passage quoted above, Tocqueville noted that God could do this because he did not exist in time. He could see “distinctly, though at once, the whole human race and each man” (emphasis added). Tocqueville, in contrast, noted that he as a mortal “could not see all that surrounds [him] at the same time” and therefore had to choose what to see. It is because our humanity binds us to a particular time that our view of politics is necessarily partial or partisan; we can try to see “further” than the parties but not differently. For those of us who cannot succeed in adopting the divine point of view, the particular and the general come together only in acts of judgment. Some judgments apply general rules to particular cases, but other judgments, reflective judgments, let us see the general through its manifestation in a particular. Democracy in America is an example of such a judgment, for Tocqueville said that he aimed to see in a particular country the essence of a general condition: “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there an image of democracy itself” (DA 1.Intro., 13). He did not title the book “The American Democracy,” as if it were a journalistic account

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

373

of one particular place or period only. Nor did he title it “Democracy: A Case Study in America,” as if democracy could not be grasped without studying a universe of cases, of which America was just one. In Tocqueville’s political science America is not simply an example; it is an exemplar. The difference between an example and an exemplar is that an exemplar suggests general conclusions all by itself. Whereas we need a whole set of examples to use the comparative method or other forms of induction common in today’s social science, we need only one well-chosen exemplar to imitate Tocqueville’s approach. An exemplar is not the same as an ideal; Tocqueville made clear that he did not aim to write a panegyric. An exemplar is a particular in which the general is embodied; it is matter in which the form can be seen. America is the most obvious exemplar in the book, but there are others too: the Puritans, who are not representative of all American colonists or all American religion but who nevertheless offer the point of departure; New England townships, which are only one form of local organization but which offer a view of how Americans educate themselves to be citizens; Andrew Jackson, who is a unique president and nevertheless offers insight into the essential nature of the presidency. It is not unusual for Tocqueville to offer just one telling detail or story when trying to explain a general point, as when he noted the fate of the Bank of the United States when trying to explain how the people respond to any perceived challenge to their sovereignty (DA 1.2.2, 170). In his own notes to the second volume, Tocqueville remarked upon his way of proceeding, saying that “[e]verything goes together in the constitution of moral man as well as in his physical nature, and just as Cuvier, by seeing a single organ, was able to reconstruct the whole body of the entire animal, someone who would know one of the opinions or habits of a people would often be able, I think, to conceive a fairly complete picture of the people itself.”12 To deduce a complete picture from one opinion is to treat that opinion as an exemplar. There is something seemingly unscientific about this way of proceeding. It relies on the writer’s peculiar judgment about which details are telling and about what they tell. It therefore requires of the interpreter a certain amount of self-assertion. This self-assertion, which is a part of any judgment, is linked to the particularity of judgments. The need for self-assertion is also what makes judgment an activity that requires at least a hint of the ability to see like an aristocrat. If it is true that seeing democracy in America is an act of judgment, and that this act of judgment is necessary to find ways of educating democracy and protecting it from itself—as Tocqueville argued it was—then it would seem that the ability to judge reflectively is necessary to see what democracy needs. And if judging in this way requires a certain individual assertiveness and responsibility, and an ability to appreciate particulars, then it seems to require certain habits of mind and

374

Bryan Garsten

heart that are in some sense aristocratic. But these aristocratic habits find in Tocqueville’s account a new justification; they serve democracy. Tocqueville was no historicist; he did not allow his thinking to be bounded or trapped by the fact that he lived in a democratic age. But he did allow himself to be oriented by that fact. To ignore the ascendance of the popular party in modern times is to be both too partisan and not partisan enough. It is to ignore the particular moment in which we live in favor of an imagined republic outside of time. What seeing “not differently” from the parties revealed to Tocqueville was that one party, the one born from the marriage between the people and Christianity, has made the world “altogether new.” Tocqueville’s political science both acknowledged and responded to this providential fact. *** Is it still difficult to grasp exactly what seeing “not differently but further than the parties” means? Perhaps it would be best not to look for a general account of the matter, but instead to study those authors whose writings exemplify this kind of seeing, those individuals who find a way to be both philosophical and partisan at the same time—Tocqueville, certainly, and perhaps one or two of his translators.

NOTES 1. Harvey C. Mansfield, “Party and Sect in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories,” in Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 171, 175. 2. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1.Intro., 15. Hereafer references to this work will be given in the text as DA followed by volume, part, chapter, and page number. 3. Pierre Manent, “Tocqueville, Political Philosopher” in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Harvey C. Mansfield, A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2001), 4; Leo Strauss, “On Classical Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 81n2. 4. See Tocqueville’s letter to Madame Swetchine, February 26, 1857, which reveals both his interest in religion and his distance from it: “I do not know if I ever told you about an incident in my youth that left a deep impression on me. Confined as I was, in the years immediately following childhood, to a kind of solitude, and driven by an insatiable curiosity that could find nothing to satisfy it other than the books in a large library, I accumulated a haphazard assortment of notions and ideas that usually belong to a different stage of life. My life until then had been steeped in an inward faith so secure that no doubt had been allowed to penetrate my soul. Now, however, doubt arrived, or, rather, came storming in with extraordinary violence, not just doubt about this or that but universal doubt. I suddenly experienced

Seeing “Not Differently, but Further, than the Parties”

375

the sensation that everyone who has been through an earthquake describes: the ground moves beneath your feet, the walls move, the ceiling overhead moves, the furniture to which you cling no longer stands still, and all of nature shifts before your eyes. I was gripped by the blackest melancholy, overcome with disgust with a life I did not yet know, and almost dumbfounded with confusion and terror at the thought of the path I had yet to travel in this world.” Quoted in Antoine Redier, Comme disait M. de Tocqueville (Paris: Perrin, 1925), 287–88. 5. Pierre Manent offers a beautiful account of this question and the complications that it raises in Pierre Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, trans. John Waggoner (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), ch. 8. The next few paragraphs are indebted to his argument there. 6. Harvey C. Mansfield, “Hobbes and the Science of Indirect Government,” American Political Science Review 65 (1971). See also Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Democracy in America, ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), xlvi. 7. Harvey C. Mansfield, “Party Government and the Settlement of 1688,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 935. 8. Manent, “Tocqueville, Political Philosopher,” 108–20. 9. Laurence Guellec, “The Writer Engagé: Tocqueville and Political Rhetoric,” in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl Welch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 167–87. 10. Sharon R. Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), especially 85–95. 11. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 1284a4–b34. 12. As quoted in James T. Schleifer, “Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Reconsidered,” in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, 124.

18 Respectable Partisanship Russell Muirhead

The respectability of party and partisanship, an essential achievement of modern politics, is at the same time fragile and incomplete. On one hand, organized opposition no longer has to take the form of a conspiracy. In modern democracies, plotting to overthrow the government takes place out in the open, and has public identities—the Democrats, the Conservatives, the Socialists, whatever party or parties happens to be out of power. Their leaders are public figures, and their organizations invite anyone to join. Only because party and partisanship are respectable can an organized opposition be legitimate, and only with legitimate opposition is modern democracy possible. On the other hand, the tethers that connect party organizations to the loyalties, affections, passions, and identities of citizens have frayed in comparison to fifty years ago across nearly all industrialized democracies.1 For citizens, being a partisan does not seem entirely respectable: most think it is better to vote for a person rather than a party, or to evaluate issues one-by-one rather than embrace a party program.2 As one scholar of partisanship notes, the normative standing of partisanship is one important factor in the decline of popular partisan identifications over the past half-century.3 Parties, as the institutional expression of the contest for ruling offices, are functionally necessary for modern democracy, yet partisanship seems to reflect a deficiency in citizens.4 The gap between the functional importance of parties and their ethical or normative standing makes this dependence a source of vulnerability for modern republics. The tendency to see party and partisanship as lamentable imperfections, even marks of corruption, suggests that modern democracy appears to its own citizens as partly illegitimate. 377

378

Russell Muirhead

And this in turn threatens to render modern democracy itself more fragile than its achievements and endurance would otherwise indicate. This possibility has not been overlooked by political science, whose practitioners have grasped the necessity of party in democracy since the late nineteenth century. Since then they devoted considerable energy to the project of reforming and strengthening parties rather than eradicating them.5 Especially with the drop-off in party identification among citizens in modern electoral democracies since 1970, but more generally since World War II, political science has attended keenly to the importance of party and partisanship in their many varieties.6 The assumption informing much work is that if the party system were reformed in one manner or another, democracy would function in a more responsive and accountable manner, and the parties would better solicit the loyalties and affections of citizens. Yet few have focused on the most elemental question, the respectability of party itself. How can it be good or praiseworthy to identify with a part of the people, with a faction, rather than identify with the common good and interest of the whole? It might be argued that partisans do see themselves as standing for the common good, but encounter others—rival partisans— who disagree about what the common good consists in. This very disagreement among rival partisans, however, threatens to place any shared conception of the common good beyond reach. Even when all partisans act in good faith, it is difficult to appreciate this quality in one’s opponents. For if their faith is good and their minds are adept, there seems no reason why they do not agree with one’s own view. Or if there is a reason that one can appreciate, then it does not make sense to hold one’s own opinions in the first place. Thus it is natural for rival partisans to mistrust each other. This mutual distrust makes coming together behind a shared conception of the common good that much more difficult. Opposition can breed distrust and, eventually, enmity. Against all this, is it not better—more responsible, more virtuous, more public-spirited—to stand apart from party, to be impartial? Citizens and representatives who model themselves on the judge or the scientist, who strive to let their judgment go where the evidence takes it, seem more respectable than those whose loyalties are akin to sports fans, who stand by the home team no matter how it plays or who plays for it. How can party be respectable when independents get the highest praise?

RESPECTABLE PARTISANSHIP One of the few who has given the question of respectable partisanship extended attention is Harvey C. Mansfield, whose first book, Statesmanship and Party Government, searchingly examines Edmund Burke’s defense of party.7

Respectable Partisanship

379

The “respectability of party”—Mansfield’s phrase—is on its face merely descriptive.8 What is respectable in a street gang is different from what is respectable at a country club, and neither set of traits may turn out to be good on reflection. Respectability invokes a social world of appearances and expectations, where the social standing conferred by class identities and group memberships has a profound impact on personal identity.9 Mansfield uses the term in both a descriptive and an ethical sense, on the assumption that what people admire is connected to what they consider good in an ethical sense. As an ethical notion, “respectability” falls between the modern moral poles of “forbidden” and “required.” Something respectable is permitted, but is not a duty in the strict sense. But respectable qualities or actions are better than those that are merely permissible, and can be made public without shame or any burden of explanation. Reading erotica is perfectly permissible, but the devotee might hesitate to discuss favorites at a family picnic. An example of a respectable quality is diligence, which can make those who manifest it as tedious as the work they so assiduously do, but it remains a prudent and acceptable quality to exhibit in public.10 To say that party is respectable is not to say that everyone must be a partisan, only that partisans may bring their partisanship into the public. They can rally, organize, agitate, scheme, advocate, argue, and oppose for everyone to see. Burke was the first in England—the place where representative government and modern parties originated, so the most important—to offer an explicit defense of parties and partisan contestation.11 In “Thoughts on the Present Discontents,” Burke lifts party out of its origins in individual ambition and connects it to impersonal and more noble goals, saying, “Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.”12 Partisanship had been a normal feature of British politics since the Glorious Revolution, but it was Burke who first decisively defined party in such a way as to make it essential, desirable, and admirable. As Burke writes in the same essay, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”13 Burke’s discovery that party could be made respectable depended on ideas and developments that had already done much to undercut the traditional understanding of partisanship, which identified party as an evil. What Burke had in view was not the traditional opprobrium attached to party, but a new and more vigorous intolerance of party and partisanship that was distinctively modern. His doctrine of respectable partisanship followed from his disillusionment with modern politics—in particular with the idea that certain first principles of political morality evident to any unprejudiced mind are sufficient to order society and politics. Can Burke’s discovery of respectable partisanship be our inheritance, or the inheritance of modern democracy more generally? Or does the vitality

380

Russell Muirhead

of party and partisanship depend on recasting their respectability in new and more appropriate ways? Assessing these questions depends on a fuller account of the traditional understanding of fugitive partisanship and the modern understanding of progressive partisanship.

FUGITIVE PARTISANSHIP Parties are an evil, according to the traditional understanding that the popular mind has never fully rejected.14 Only a residue today, this understanding was more evident in the eighteenth century, and is famously reflected in George Washington’s parting caution against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.”15 Parties, or groups who not only make claims on government, but who seek to rule, threaten to destabilize and overturn existing orders. They introduce dissension, tumult, and, ultimately, revolution. Thus, they cannot easily be a “normal” feature of any political order, nor can they be openly embraced by those who seek to stabilize and perpetuate a political order. Akin to conspiracies, they are at best occasionally tolerated when necessary to combat a tyrant. A temporary contrivance embraced in emergencies, they are shunned once order is restored. In this sense, the “partisan” suggests the defiance and courage of a resistance fighting against a tyrannical threat, ideally on behalf of decency and justice. But the resistance, once successful, will need to ensure that its example is not followed casually. Once its occasion has passed, partisanship will again need to become fugitive—sensed, but unseen. Regimes do not understand themselves as partisan in the sense that they are partial, incomplete, in need of complimentary institutions and ideas they cannot generate. Settled regimes depend on an understanding of themselves that casts them as wholes, worthy of the permanent allegiance of their citizens and even the support of those they oppress. The contemporary pluralist insight that any established regime is partial because no social world can accommodate the full human possibility, is on the traditional understanding unavailable to citizens, who must be unaware of their own partiality.16 Political philosophy goes beyond the self-understanding of citizens and exposes the partiality of the regime, which is why classical political philosophy is subversive. But traditional political philosophy’s subversive potential originates in a sympathetic appraisal of public opinion. It does not start by undercutting popular self-understandings and widely held claims, replacing them with unfamiliar scientific terms that strive to be neutral of competing claims. It does not, for instance, treat claims as “preferences,” or parties as psychological objects of attachment, or otherwise assume that non-political concepts drawn from economics or psychology are necessary

Respectable Partisanship

381

as a first step toward explaining political things clearly. It starts rather with common opinions, especially concerning what people deserve. To say that you deserve something is not to state a preference but to issue a claim. The starting point for traditional political philosophy is the collection of claims that actually arise in political life, most particularly the claim to rule.17 For instance, in Aristotle’s political philosophy, two claims surface in the recurring contest of political life: those of the moneyed and those of the many.18 The oligarchs’ claim to rule is based on the stake they have in the regime—they have the most to lose. But even more, their claim is based on the qualities of mind and character that are associated with money. To acquire and maintain property demands practical smarts and self-restraint. Even if acquisition comes from luck, keeping what one has acquired requires prudent investing and the self-discipline to avoid profligate spending. To accumulate and maintain wealth, oligarchs practice self-denial. Foregoing today’s pleasures for tomorrow’s riches, they stand against their own desires and temptations. The way of life of the moneyed makes a habit of taking a long-term view and focusing on what endures (property) over what dissipates (pleasures). Such a character has a connection to deliberating in general, including deliberation about public things; this connection underwrites the oligarchic claim to rule. The many, in the classical sense, are not middle class but poor and uneducated. Lacking both the means and the opportunity to acquire, they are also thought to be lacking in the habits of self-restraint that nourish practical wisdom and good long-run judgment. But these very deficits are connected to their distinctive claim, which arises from what they do distinctively possess, namely life and freedom. It is the many who actually populate the country, and even if as individuals they focus on the short-run, the common interest can never wholly neglect them and still be common. Moreover, because they are unburdened and undistracted by property, they are more attuned to basic and perhaps universal interests such as selfpreservation and security. By virtue of their condition, the many are also more sensitive to both the joys of freedom and its utility. This is, in some sense, all the poor have to lose, and for that reason, they cherish and value it more. Pride and its manifold expressions connected to property and rank do not loosen the poor’s grasp of the fundamental human interest in freedom, security, and self-preservation. This understanding of true and widely shared human interests constitutes the distinctive claim to rule that the many possess.19 From the inside, each view looks complete. From their own perspectives, they are not partisans, but possessors of valid claims. Each sees its own virtue as sufficient. To Aristotle, standing at the distance philosophic reflection on political life affords, each gets it right—and wrong. “All fasten,” he says, “on a certain sort of justice, but proceed only to a certain point, and

382

Russell Muirhead

do not speak of the whole of justice in its authoritative sense.” The claim of each group is only a partial claim: most judge badly, Aristotle notes, “concerning their own things.”20 As a result, the claim each advances in fact reflects only a part, but not the whole, of what justice requires. The moneyed suppose that because they are unequal in one respect, wealth, they are unequal generally, while the many think that because they are equal in one fundamental respect they are equal generally. Although they exaggerate, Aristotle argues, the moneyed have a partial claim. For instance, because they are accustomed to dealing they are more adept and even trustworthy in contracts, and because they own more territory, they have a natural connection to the common good, which involves looking after and preserving common territory. Similarly, the many also have a partially true claim to rule. Standing together, they are a superior force, and are even wealthier in aggregate than the moneyed. Their collective interest also has an inner connection to the common good, for politics needs the strength and cooperation of numbers for stability. Moreover, taken together the many are in some ways better judges of officials than individuals standing alone.21 Because each of the key contenders for rule has a partial hold on a true claim to rule, politics can benefit from—and may need—these partisans. Thus, in Aristotle’s view, the best regimes (practically speaking) mix partisan principles; they are both democratic and oligarchic. When they rule by themselves, both the many and the moneyed tend to make the regime a more extreme form of itself. Oligarchs aim to make things more oligarchic, and democrats similarly aim to make things more democratic. In the process, they not only make politics less stable (by excluding powerful groups from power) but also render it less just. Thus Aristotle counsels regimes to lean against their dominant tendency by complementing their dominant principle with an opposite and competing one. Regimes need to welcome exactly what they repress, the partisan views that oppose the partisan nature of the regime.22 This does not constitute an embrace of open partisan contestation or party government because the aim is a less partisan regime. The ideal is to overcome partisanship, which is why the best practical regime is not one of vibrant partisan contestation but a sort of middleclass democracy where the distinction between factions dissolves, and with it, the clash of partisan understandings of justice.23 On the traditional account, the task of political philosophy is not to supply partisans with the best arguments, but to expose the partisan nature of the regime and attain an understanding higher than the partisan’s.24 Some residue of this traditional understanding survives in popular understanding that statesmen are superior in the quality of their understanding and ambition to mere politicians. For the most part, however, the traditional account of partisanship has been rendered obsolete by modern political science,

Respectable Partisanship

383

which promised to order society and politics in a non-partisan way.25 This promise in turn underwrote a new and more vigorous opprobrium of party and partisanship.

PROGRESSIVE PARTISANSHIP For the ends of ancient politics—cultivating good character, where what counts as good reflects the understanding of the ruling group—modern politics substitutes ends that are more widely shared: self-preservation and comfortable living. In the Hobbesian formulation, the end of modern politics is given by a rational preference for the preservation of life over premature and violent death. In the Lockean elaboration, more emphasis falls on property and the liberty to direct one’s life without interference by the arbitrary and domineering wills of other persons. The principles of life and liberty are not taken to be rooted in any particular way of life. They are not presented or embraced as distinctive goods that express a particular and necessarily partial understanding of the human good. Thus a regime devoted to securing them cannot be seen—or at any rate, cannot see itself—as falsely generalizing partial goods available mainly to particular social groups. Modern politics does not seek to generalize the highest goods or virtues about which people will always disagree, but rather to secure goods that all can identify and share. At its most confident, modern politics forecloses the occasions for partisanship. Although its central value is toleration, modern politics is not altogether more tolerant of partisanship; in some ways it intensifies anti-partisanship. This is why the “discovery that modern politics could be made respectable” required not merely relaxing whatever remained of the traditional understanding of partisanship, but also revising the modern conceit that political order and political practice can be founded on basic and universal true principles, or more succinctly, “first principles.” Modern politics was born of a certain hostility to party in the sense that it was designed to combat what Hume called “parties of principle” and what Tocqueville later called “great parties.”26 Fueled by creedal convictions and seeking rival social and political orders, these parties wreaked tumult and bloodshed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They did not die only of exhaustion, or of the failure of any one party to win decisively, but by virtue of an alternative that showed how politics could be ordered on a basis of what all shared— security, comfort, and freedom. By displacing these great parties, modern politics might seem to be indifferent to the tiny distinctions that define what Tocqueville called “small parties,” which express the electoral ambition of certain contenders for office.27 But to the extent that small and insignificant differences may generate larger and more potent ones, even

384

Russell Muirhead

small parties can never be entirely safe, and thus must be viewed with suspicion.28 The one exception is the “last party,” a progressive party that aims to found politics on universal principles and so make partisanship henceforth unnecessary and unjustifiable. Locke’s own Whigs, who came together as a result of his mentor Shaftesbury’s agitations during the Exclusion Crisis, seemed to see themselves in such a light. Such a party to end parties was precisely what Lord Bolingbroke’s writings inspired in late eighteenth-century England, Mansfield argues, through their influence on the followers of Grenville in the 1760s, on those of William Pitt later, and finally on those of King George III.29 While this party was often in opposition, the sort of regime it advocated would make future opposition unnecessary: “based on non-partisan principles, it was meant to be the last party.”30 Bolingbroke’s “political school” advocated the principle of ability over the system of corruption by which the king sold places or income-producing offices to gain influence in parliament.31 Rather than influence and connections, honesty and ability would be sufficient to administer a politics founded on universal first principles of political morality. In an ideal government staffed by the most able who are selflessly devoted to the public good, public officials offer no claim of their own. They do not claim to rule, and in a sense they do not rule; they administer. They do not suppose that they have any special understanding of the human good, and therefore cannot claim a right to discipline others for the sake of advancing that understanding. They offer no claims at all, only merits. Their virtues, honesty, and ability are not heroic, and they substitute for the rarer virtues connected with statesmanship. Rather than condescend from their superior understandings to appeal to widely shared sentiments and attachments, the able and honest simply serve first principles that all can see and all can grasp. The able and honest do not rule in the classic sense but rather lead in the modern sense. They are administrators, not rulers; public servants, not statesmen; competent, not wise. They do not shape the souls of citizens but apply uncommon expertise to the application of commonly affirmed ends.32 The most perfect expression of Bolingbroke’s program forms what would become a general aspiration of modern republics, namely a non-partisan civil service motivated exclusively by devotion to a common-sense understanding of the common good.33 To realize this ideal requires partisanship—a group needs to organize and win office for the sake of putting an end to spoils, patronage, and corruption. But because it serves universal principles, this party, once successful, will not need to tolerate opposition.34

Respectable Partisanship

385

DISILLUSIONMENT AND PARTY GOVERNMENT Burke’s defense of party was meant to create oppositional space by demoting and defeating Bolingbroke’s last party. Insofar as Bolingbroke’s party was a reflection of Lockean teachings, inspired by the belief that society and politics could be structured according to first principles conducive to peace and prosperity, Burke’s doctrine was conservative. It was meant to be a brake on the liberal project of social and political reform. In this sense, the respectability of party is not a consequence of enlightened toleration but rather of “disillusion” about the promise of enlightenment for politics.35 When one party believes itself to possess a truth sufficient for society and politics, its opposition must convincingly claim one of two things: either that it (the rival party) in fact possesses the truth sufficient for politics and that the first party is wrong in this respect, or that no party (and therefore no government controlled by a party) can uniquely and fully possess the truth sufficient for politics. In the first case, the result of the party clash—of two or more parties claiming to possess the truth—does not represent “a discovery that party can be made respectable,” since each party believes that it alone is respectable. For each, opponents must be seen as caught in the grip of a mistake—a mistake perhaps motivated by an intellectual defect, corrupting self-interest, or delusional ambition. It is only where neither party is seen as representing non-partisan political truth that it is possible to see party as such as respectable. This is why “open, formed opposition” is not a consequence of enlightenment, but “of a gradual disillusionment” with the virtues of party government.36 Party government in the extraordinary sense—the way Mansfield applies it to Bolingbroke—is a government ruled by a party that justifies its claim by reference to first principles. The success of such a program would end the occasion for legitimate partisan contestation. The full legitimacy of the party comes not only from the procedures by which it gains power, but from the true principles it stands for. By contrast, party government in the ordinary sense of a party in power that must tolerate the presence of an open opposition—the Republicans controlling the legislature and the executive, for example—cannot be fully legitimate in this way. In this ordinary case, party government is only legitimate in the procedural sense that it won according to established rules that involve free and fair elections; it cannot be legitimate in the more complete sense that attributes to it an exclusive and true claim to rule. Without the acceptance of a permanent partisan contestation, party cannot be respectable. Yet the endorsement of permanent party contestation presupposes a political life that lacks the confidence that any party can uniquely embody first principles of justice.

386

Russell Muirhead

In the most thorough case of disillusionment, the respectability of party follows from a rejection of the idea of truth itself and its bearing on politics. A politics where no party could claim to be inspired by any truth might seem to be one where all partisanship is permitted. But this condition of wholesale disillusionment would sooner undercut party and partisanship than make them respectable. In a political world where no truth could be located to guide or constrain individual ambition, party would only reflect disrespectable ambition—the desire to rule stripped of any claim to rule. This might be the world we inhabit, or come to think we inhabit, once all is unmasked. But it is not what equipped Burke to discover the respectability of party. The disillusionment that led to respectable partisanship was incomplete and thus did not fully demote the core commitments of modern politics. It did not attack the modern principles of freedom and equality so much as question the human capacity to impartially serve and reliably implement these principles. The principle of ability supposes that those who seek office and keep office can overcome their own pride, sublimate their ambition, and place themselves as selfless servants of simple first principles. Burke was profoundly skeptical that any party could fully escape the stain of the passions that darken human motives. The competent have their vanities just as the incompetent do, and they will never be so pure as to harness their abilities to public purposes alone. Politics cannot be pruned of ambition; the angelic disinterest required to administer these principles reliably and impartially will ever elude us. Even parties that take the promise of public-spirited ability seriously and privilege it over social connections will need a regular opposition to keep them honest and to replace them when they are not. Beyond this suspicion of human motives, Burke also denied a critical element of the progressive view that informed Bolingbroke and his followers, which was the belief that a unique set of simple principles can be straightforwardly institutionalized in the political world. In Burke’s view, the truths of modern politics—liberty and equality—require both prejudices and a variety of institutions (not all of them obviously consistent with liberty and equality) for their support.37 In a manner that anticipates liberal pluralism, Burke insists that liberty requires variety: a variety of “establishments,” of social positions, of economic conditions, and, ultimately, of views.38 For Burke, this institutional variety cannot issue from the rational design of a single moment, or a discrete founding; it is an inheritance from the ages. This inheritance can be—and needs to be—adapted and improved, but this incremental process demands prudent judgment more than a comprehensive rational design based on simple first principles. The veneration that time bestows on all things cannot be fully replaced by the appreciation that rationality bestows on some things.39 Simplicity of prin-

Respectable Partisanship

387

ciple presents its own dangers and its own ruthlessness, against which the establishment of variety (in part through party) is a necessary precaution. Because the variety of institutions, beliefs, and social practices that support liberty was not and could not have been designed at a stroke by human beings for that purpose, the principles of liberty and equality cannot be simply “administered” in a non-partisan scientific manner.

PARTISAN CONFIDENCE The loss of confidence in the modern faith that politics can consist in the application of common-sense rational principles creates the possibility for accepting permanent partisan contestation. The disillusionment—which comes from a realization that even improvements have their costs, that the best intentions have unanticipated and regrettable consequences, and that even decent men and women may have their devotion to the public good corrupted by private interests and ends—rises and recedes in the popular consciousness, but stays well short of a wholesale rejection of the promise of progress. Whatever the case for Burke, the more general disillusionment with this promise has only been partial. It gnaws at the edges of the progressive project (occasionally its leading edge), but never fully displaces the core. It leaves largely intact the basic beliefs that the application of simple first principles to politics has an improving and salutary effect, that the ends of politics should be general security and shared prosperity, and that good government consists at least partly in competent, non-partisan administration of the common interest. If we have been disillusioned of the promise that general enlightenment alone is sufficient to redeem society and government, we nonetheless believe in democracy and progress more than any comprehensive alternative. Fundamental alternatives to modern politics based in the monarchic principle, the ancient rule of the wise, and the aristocracy of the holy, all hold no sway. To be a disillusioned modern is still to be modern. Even in its disillusioned expressions, modern politics makes central certain truths that can be simplified to first principles and are available to natural reason and common sense. Because the disillusion with the promise of modernity is incomplete, the possibility remains that one or more parties will have a progressive element, or a sense that they are devoted to making first principles of political morality more effective through policies and programs. Serving these truths effectively and reliably remains a comprehensible and potentially popular political goal. In the projects of deepening the hold of civil rights, mitigating environmental depredation, or extending health care to those who need but lack it—only to name a few current causes—modern partisans can continue to understand themselves as

388

Russell Muirhead

progressives and their parties as committed to first principles. They can make sense of their opponents by seeing them as inexcusably mistaken or irremediably corrupt. This is why the respectability of party remains an incomplete achievement. At the same time, conservative parties cannot be founded on a wholesale rejection of modernity and rational reform. Although conservatives lack full confidence in the principles of modernity, they do not counter these with any comprehensively opposing principles. They rather counter principle as such with prudence. Since it does not oppose the modern project wholeheartedly, conservatism lacks a kind of confidence in itself.40 Although this may suggest that progressive parties can be more confident, they too will not always be able to avoid the touch of disillusionment that puts complete confidence beyond reach. The experience of governing reveals to progressives that popular interests, customs, and loyalties can make the social world unwelcoming of even enlightened reforms. Partisan confidence comes not simply from unfaltering conviction in one’s own party, but from the presence of the “other.” The very presence of conservatives gives progressives a distraction from the flaws and difficulties that are encountered in the application of progressive principles, a location to place blame for the incomplete success of progressive ideals. The presence of progressives meanwhile gives conservatives a distraction from the fact that they cannot offer a comprehensive alternative to rational progress, only a slower pace and more careful application of progressive impulses. But each can see in the other something less contingent, less disillusioned, and less temperate than it likely is. Progressives can seem, from a distance, eager to impose rational principles regardless of the violence this does to traditions, religions, and customs; while conservatives can seem like closet oligarchs, more eager to collect power in a privileged class than to use it for the public good. By giving the opposition confidence in itself, each party protects the other from that specter of total disillusionment that tempts and haunts the modern soul. Because the confidence of modern parties comes as much from the fact of opposition as from confidence in the basic principles that define parties, partisan contestation appears at times to be a pseudo-contest, driven by office-seeking ambitions more than true distinctions. Rather than offer a “real choice,” parties seem to introduce false divisions that distract the polity from the common-sense pursuit of the common good. This charge has great currency at the moment, when many believe that partisan elites of all stripes busy themselves with disputes that most people have no stake in. As Morris Fiorina says, “The bulk of the American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the crossfire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other.”41 On the surface, the worry is that parties will

Respectable Partisanship

389

fail to represent the broad common-sense center of the country, in the process introducing controversies that appeal only to the highly politicized people at the ideological extremes. But the more profound concern is that these partisan elites will influence the broader public over time, driving more people to the extremes and sacrificing the country’s unity. These worries—and the underlying charge that parties contest too much and for the wrong reasons—are reminiscent of the charge that animated Bolingbroke’s attack on the Whigs and the Tories of the 1740s. The country, Bolingbroke insisted, stood together, devoted to liberty and prosperity. But it was systematically betrayed by both Whigs and Tories, who had a real contest in the revolution of the seventeenth century, but whose names persisted in the eighteenth century only to serve the corrupt interests and destructive ambitions of power-seeking politicians. As an alternative to self-interested parties and politicians, Bolingbroke looked to a patriot king who would serve the country’s common-sense interests with the help of non-partisan, able, and honest administrators. It was, as Mansfield argues, to counter Bolingbroke’s influence that Burke advanced the doctrine of respectable partisanship. But the tenacity of the anti-partisan view down to the present day suggests that Burke’s effort was at best an incomplete success. The respectability of party was a necessarily incomplete achievement because the disillusionment upon which it was based was itself partial. It demoted the promise of rational progress without displacing it, and it left intact enough of the progressive self-understanding to maintain the distinctively modern intolerance of party. Progressivism remains, not merely a residue of a more muscular progressivism, but strengthened because it is insulated by partisan opponents from the kind of debilitating disillusionment of the sort that might dissolve the progressive promise wholly. Liberal conservatism—the sort unlike reactionary conservatism affiliated with an undemocratic ancient regime or fascism—gives progressivism vitality by providing it an opponent that does not fundamentally oppose it. This is the logic of a party system, which sustains a dominant intellectual pole, orients political action, and disadvantages new fundamental oppositions. In light of this, it should not be entirely surprising that there is an enduring gap between the utility of party in modern democracy and the normative standing of party. Once we see the respectability of party not as a consequence of enlightened toleration, but rather of disillusionment with the promise of a rationally ordered politics, it becomes clear why the modern intolerance of party continues to inform political intuitions and judgments. Because disillusionment with the promise of a rationally ordered politics is itself only partial and occasional, party has never become wholly respectable. Party and partisanship can come out of the closet, but they remain disadvantaged. The public presentation of partisanship needs to be nuanced, as in “undercover partisans” who present themselves in public as

390

Russell Muirhead

“independents.”42 Short of a complete disillusionment with the progressive promise of politics, the disadvantage that party and partisanship suffer will linger.

REMAKING RESPECTABLE PARTIES Whether Burke’s discovery can continue to be our inheritance will depend on the extent to which our public philosophy takes seriously axiomatic first principles of political morality. To the extent that we are Locke’s descendants in a very general sense, which is to say that we accept natural freedom and equality as moral facts, and believe that the implications of these facts can be realized through the impartial administration of justice and the common interest, there will be occasion to rediscover Burke’s discovery as our own. Our own efforts to realize the implications of these first principles will meet with impediments often enough that some will be disillusioned not only with the failure of the aspirations but also with the zealous pursuit of their success. And this disillusionment may continue to make possible the respectability of party. To be sure, many of the most thoughtful and rigorous accounts of our public philosophy share the early modern conviction that there are certain truths sufficient for ordering politics and society to a large degree—the liberal egalitarianism of Brian Barry and Ronald Dworkin are examples.43 Yet a shyness about proclaiming the “truth” of our basic political morality affects many equally thoughtful accounts. Most notably, John Rawls stepped back in his later work from the confidence that many found so inspiring about A Theory of Justice.44 Our values, Rawls argues, are right for us in large part because they are ours. We affirm tolerance and freedom in the way we do because we are the inheritors of those who found tolerance preferable to bloodshed in the wake of the religious wars. And we affirm human equality because we descend from those who rejected slavery and a society where some could be used for the sake of others. This is who we are, and it is what our principles must comport with; whether it is “true” in some metaphysical or philosophic or religious sense is beside the point.45 And we can recognize that what we are will require us to neglect, or even to repress, other ways of being for “there is no social world without loss.”46 If he is disillusioned, Rawls remains confident. His is the “most appropriate” understanding, he insists, of what it means to take citizens as free and equal.47 Others, disillusioned of the conviction that modern principles of political morality are universal and true, also give up the confidence that any neutral principles can be located that will be sufficient for ordering society and politics. On this view, we inhabit a moral world of multiple and competing values that cannot be rank-ordered or compared on a common

Respectable Partisanship

391

scale. From this, some conclude that none of the “constitutive elements of doctrinal liberalism—universalism, individualism, egalitarianism, and meliorism—survives the ordeal by value-pluralism, and that liberalism, as a political philosophy, is therefore dead.”48 The early modern moment of confidence is entirely without warrant. Value pluralism precludes the possibility of first principles of political morality that are sufficient for ordering society and politics. There are no principles so true that their application should be so wide. When the insights of value pluralism come to define not only the most erudite accounts of our public philosophy but also public opinion, both the progressive and conservative elements of party politics will be transformed. Partisan confidence will need to find new sources, and the respectability of party will need a new foundation. Should value pluralism give rise to radically pluralist societies in which individuals are claimed by associations and the rival values that define them, partisanship may come more and more to be informed by competing and sometimes incompatible worldviews that are rooted in distinct ways of life. This would require that the identities of citizens be more fully claimed by the groups that they belong to than most are now.49 If value pluralism were lived out not through a menu of options that individuals choose and reject as they please, but in distinct ways of life that are inherited as much as they are chosen, partisanship would reacquire its traditional characteristics, and rival parties would come to stand more or less explicitly for rival regimes. The traditional teaching about party, made obsolete by early modern political science, would be relevant once again, and politics would again need those who can broker and balance, not merely competently apply principles on which all agree. It would need people who transcend the particular and partial views that adhere in various social groups, but who understand those groups well enough to persuade them. Against this radical pluralist prospect, others hold that value pluralism and political liberalism can be mutually supporting, even if “[v]alue pluralism rules out any general appeal to the classic Enlightenment value of public truth as the ground for political liberalism.”50 On this view, modern liberalism nourishes value pluralism by facilitating diverse modes of living, and can accommodate and protect the diversity it enables. Amid this variety, a minimal political morality—that specifies, for instance, what counts as evil—allows the state to police pluralism, ensuring for instance that citizens have an effective right to exit the very groups to which they have previously committed themselves. Beyond specifying and guarding against what counts as bad, citizens of a liberal pluralist state can hold certain values like political order and a range of “ethical presumptions” that make it possible for the state to affirm itself as a political community in which citizens share “some conception of justice and the human good.”51 In such a state, there would be both room and need for open and vital partisanship

392

Russell Muirhead

that translates group claims into political claims, and that negotiates the boundaries between the state and the associations it accommodates. A partisanship nourished by deep moral diversity yet striving to locate common ground from diverse starting points is akin to what Burke hoped for in making party respectable. This will require, among other things, that the social groups pursuing rival goods in a pluralist setting express their aims not only as private communal groups but as partisans who argue that others should share the conception of justice they advance. For it is through partisanship that we stand in relation to one another not only as rivals (even enemies) but also as members of one political community, as ready to peacefully suffer our losses as to enjoy our victories. The successful practice of liberal pluralism will require, in other words, that amid our differences we remember why party and partisanship are respectable.

NOTES 1. Russell J. Dalton, “The Decline of Party Identifications,” in Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 19–36. 2. Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg, “The Not So Simple Act of Voting,” in Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. Ada W. Finifter (Washington: American Political Science Association, 1993), 203. 3. “The primary reasons for non-partisanship are . . . normative values,” says Martin P. Wattenberg in The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952–1994 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 176. 4. For a summary of the functions that parties serve in modern democracy, see Dalton and Wattenberg, Parties Without Partisans, 5–10. The functional importance of parties is best captured by Schattschneider’s classic summary: “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.” E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2004 [1942]), 1. 5. See Austin Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1962); “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Commentary” APSR 45 (2) (June 195): 488–99; E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942); for Mansfield’s account of the “necessity of party,” see Harvey C. Mansfield “Whether Party Government Is Inevitable,” Political Science Quarterly 80 (4) (December 1965): 517–42. 6. Austin Ranney, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction: Party Reform in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Gerald M. Pomper, Party Renewal in America (New York: Praeger, 1980); William J. Crotty, Party Reform (New York: Longman, 1983); Theodore J. Lowi and Joseph Romance, A Republic of Parties: Debating the Two Party System (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 7. Harvey C. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 4. 8. The phrase first appears in Statesmanship and Party Government, 2; and see 1–16 generally.

Respectable Partisanship

393

9. For the view that this social world has transformed into one more private, see Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); and Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). 10. On the promise and pitfalls of diligence, see my Just Work (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). Insofar as working and voting are the two central virtues of democratic citizens, the work ethic and partisanship are two of the most important qualities to the health of modern republics. See Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 11. For an earlier account that shows how party contestation can be useful for expanding republics, see Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses (New York: Penguin Classics, 1984), I, 6; also Mansfield, “Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics,” in Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 82–92. 12. Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Present Discontents,” Select Works of Edmund Burke, v. 1, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999 [1770]), 150. 13. Burke, “Thoughts on the Present Discontents,” 146. 14. The traditional view of party is explained in Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 13–16. 15. The Writings of George Washington, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892), vol. XIII, 301–2. 16. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 167–72; John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 197. 17. Harvey C. Mansfield, A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2001), 4–5. 18. Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), bk. IV, ch. 3, p. 121; IV, 4, 123; V, 1, 148. 19. The previous two paragraphs expand on Aristotle, The Politics, bk. III, ch. 9; III, 13; IV, 4; V, 1; VI, 2. 20. Aristotle, The Politics, III, 9, 97. 21. Aristotle, The Politics, III, 13, 105; III, 11, 101. 22. Aristotle, The Politics, IV, 7–9, 129–32; V, 9, 166–67. 23. The middling regime, “alone is without factional conflict,” Aristotle, The Politics, IV, 11, 135. 24. Aristotle, The Politics, V, 9, 167; III, 12, 103. 25. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 16. 26. David Hume, “Of Parties in General,” Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987 [1742]), pt. 1, Essay 8; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 10. 27. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 167. 28. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 13. 29. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 109–11; for Bolingbroke’s writings, see Viscount Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King” and “A Dissertation upon Parties,” in Bolingbroke: Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

394

Russell Muirhead

30. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 113. The archetype of the last party is Marx’s Communist Party, which he cast as alone representing the true interests of humanity: “If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if by means of revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.” Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,” ed. Robert C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 490–91. 31. For an account of how Bolingbroke’s writings informed a “political school” in the 1760s, see Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 87–105. 32. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 211. 33. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 111. 34. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 69. 35. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 122, 64, 114. 36. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 116. 37. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 122; Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in Select Works of Edmund Burke, 182–96. 38. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 181. For the liberal pluralist view, see William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). For Galston’s insistence that even progressive politicians be able to “appeal to unreason and prejudice,” see The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 81. 39. James Madison, The Federalist Papers, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), no. 49, p. 340. 40. Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government, 245–46. 41. Morris P. Fiorina, with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), 5. 42. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 123; Bruce Keith et al., The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 43. Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 44. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 [1971]) 45. Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxvi–xxvii, 10, 12, 140, 303. 46. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 197, citing “one of Isaiah Berlin’s fundamental themes.” 47. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 20, 47, 103, 391. 48. John Gray, “What Is Dead and What Is Living in Liberalism,” in Post-Liberalism (New York: Routledge, 1993), 284. 49. Gray, “The Politics of Cultural Diversity,” in Post-Liberalism, 262–63. 50. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 53; also 37–38, 57–59. 51. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, 26, 65–78.

IV HARVEY MANSFIELD AS TEACHER AND SCHOLAR

19 Harvey C. Mansfield An Appreciation1 Mark Blitz

A student who attends Harvard today might think of Harvey C. Mansfield as a tough-grading conservative who defends manliness on late night television. But in the early 1960s, many Harvard professors were tough graders, highbrows regarded television as a vast wasteland, and faculty did not wear their political or other preferences on their sleeves and lapels. What attracted Mansfield’s original group of students, of which I was one, was his intelligence. We were impressed by his brain. He struck us as the smartest professor at Harvard. This scope and depth remains the core of his merit as a teacher and scholar. Who, after all, should not want to study with the best? I first met Mansfield in 1963. I was complaining to a friend about the sophomore tutorial to which I had been assigned. In those days, tutorials were formed according to the House in which you lived, not the subject you believed you wished to study. My friend told me that he was going to see Mansfield, then the assistant professor in charge of tutorials, and invited me to tag along. Mansfield asked me who my “section man” had been for Introductory Government and, of course, what grades he had given me. The answers were satisfactory and I was admitted to Mansfield’s tutorial, which covered, among other works, Plato’s Symposium and Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. I think he put it together to appeal to young men’s love of love. What we admired most, however, was how he read the texts. Ours was an intellectual generation for whom the greatest books could still be among the greatest things and Mansfield gave form and purpose to this inclination. He taught us to see problems and contradictions we had not known were present and encouraged us to believe we might discover still deeper matters. Montesquieu taught us more about politics than did a thousand articles by 397

398

Mark Blitz

journalists and scholars. Plato on love was the gateway to understanding the phenomenon itself, not a dead man’s musty opinions. We learned something of what Mansfield once called the truly “natural attraction of the hidden.” We also learned to think intelligently about questions of justice and to begin to see the remarkable impact the best political philosophers have on the way we live. Understanding the possibility of natural right provided us with grounds upon which to make reasonable judgments about practical affairs without substituting stupefying absolutism for thoughtless relativism. We could rationally defend America’s superiority to Communism without ignoring our failings. The goal of our studies was understanding, not moral and political guidance. With Mansfield’s help, we learned what it meant to use our minds. Seminars and informal reading groups are the heart of teaching political philosophy, but lectures also have their place. Mansfield developed a style of his own that features exquisitely polished set pieces delivered with characteristic flair and rapid pace. One struggled desperately to get down every word including—especially including—the jokes. To miss a step was to fall hopelessly behind. The effect was like having a hundred Koufax curveballs aimed mercilessly at one’s head. In time, his students, many of whom are now prominent figures in government, public policy, and academia, learned the proper position from which to admire the trajectory. Genuine teaching can result only from genuine learning. Mansfield brought to the classroom the same principle of inquiry that guided his own writings. Over the course of his career, he broke new ground in several areas. His first distinctive contribution was to expose the political-philosophical root of modern institutions. He began with a puzzle that few recognized, but anyone can notice now that he has pointed it out. Why do we think today that parties are respectable and, indeed, desirable when for two millennia after Plato we thought formally organized opposition to be dangerous? Mansfield discusses the shift to party government in his first book, Statesmanship and Party Government, and the papers associated with it. The change is not accidental, but results from a choice prudently made and defended by Edmund Burke. His choice fits with and helps to advance the restricted goals of politics that follow Machiavelli’s advent and Locke’s arguments. Political philosophers make economic security, acquisition, individual rights, and consent the new grounds of government—and discover and adjust institutions accordingly. Attention to commerce is united with religious toleration. The political divisions that religion exacerbates are submerged and parties based on religious splits are set aside. The “Settlement of 1688,” Mansfield writes, “ . . . resolved the religious issue by demoting it. . . . Party government required such a separation, because it was the operation of the religious issue in politics which caused great parties.”2

Harvey C. Mansfield

399

Mansfield uncovers a similar change in many institutions. He demonstrates the roots in modern political philosophy of our view of revolution, representation, and, especially, the executive, showing how what seems inevitable or merely accidental in these institutions and practices is in fact formed and adjusted by design. Taming the Prince looks at the executive, or the places one might expect to see an executive, in thinkers from Aristotle to Publius. Executives are central for us, but missing in Aristotle. If executives are missing in Aristotle’s thought, they are not an inevitable element of political life, or of just political life. Our president reminds us of a king, but is not a king. Mansfield shows how the heart of the modern executive is ambivalence. Governing is understood or disguised as service to a higher master that to be effective must also take some prerogatives of rule. This practice of indirection originates in Machiavelli’s assimilation of Christianity’s success to human enterprise. As his successors absorb and adjust his teaching, it develops through Hobbes and Locke to our American republican executive. Modern government represents the people rather than rules them. We can properly understand the executive power and the political parties that modernity favors and employs only in light of this new purpose. Modern government is limited, and princes are tamed, but not eliminated. “The beauty of executive power,” Mansfield tells us, “ . . . is to be both subordinate and not subordinate, both weak and strong. It can reach where law cannot, and thus supply the defect of law, yet remain subordinate to law. The ambivalence in the modern executive permits its strength to be useful to republics, without endangering them. . . . To examine the nature of executive power [is] to see how its ambivalence was purposefully conceived and developed.”3 Taming the Prince follows Mansfield’s New Modes and Orders, a commentary on Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy that is nearly as subtle and bold as the work it interprets. His commentary demonstrates the virtues that should guide scholars of the humanities: patient exploration of the intention of a superior author, attention to other scholars and generosity to trailblazing teachers, brilliance and wit, and an eye toward what can improve us here and now. New Modes and Orders helps to restore commentary to its rightful place as a form of philosophical inquiry. It is in my judgment the most searching of Mansfield’s writings, rivaled among his contemporaries only by Seth Benardete’s commentaries on Plato’s dialogues. It is the first of his books on Machiavelli and (co)translations of his major works. Leo Strauss illuminated Machiavelli’s true importance. Mansfield, who never hid but instead makes obvious his debt to Strauss, further clarifies Machiavelli’s arguments and helps to dissipate the scholastic fog for another generation. The other thinker Mansfield translated, together with his wife the late Delba Winthrop, is Tocqueville. One of his signal contributions, indeed, is

400

Mark Blitz

to help restore Tocqueville’s genuine importance, so that he cannot so easily be reduced to a nascent sociologist, fountain of (sometimes concocted) quotations, or uncritical friend of associations. Mansfield elevates Tocqueville from his all too familiar semi-significant perch as an uncannily prescient observer of American life to the commanding height of a central figure in political understanding. There is no more important task than helping to restore to their proper place earlier thinkers and modes of inquiry. Tocqueville’s view of the place, or absence, of formality in liberal democracy, together with what we glean from Machiavelli and his successors about institutions and from Machiavelli and Aristotle about virtue, become central elements of the constitutionalism that Mansfield (re)creates and recommends to his fellow citizens and political scientists. The turn in political science and everyday life toward the dominance of informal power and material causes, and away from observing forms and taking them seriously, overlooks the political science of the founders and endangers our liberty. “Forms or formalities,” Mansfield writes, “equalize human relationships while preserving necessary inequalities, by preventing them from being relationships of mere unrestrained power.”4 Mansfield developed a constitutional standpoint above partisan liberalism and conservatism and beyond narrow proceduralism and populist excess. This formal standpoint governs the essays in America’s Constitutional Soul and the earlier Spirit of Liberalism. “The constitutional viewpoint as I see it is a formal one,” he writes, and it is endangered by the galloping informality or increasing democratism of our politics.”5 Mansfield’s scholarship has also sought to restore the question of virtue to its honored place. Intelligent discussion of government forces us to wonder about its purpose. This purpose is happiness, and happiness is inseparable from virtue: virtue is politics’ chief goal and statesmanship’s guiding resource. “When executive power is made constitutional and republican,” he argues, “it gives Machiavellian necessity its due by maintaining some of the maneuverability and flexibility of the prince. But it does so, at its best, without loss of responsibility for acting with virtue.” Mansfield’s effort to breathe life into what for us has become a bloodless phenomenon is especially visible in his recent book, Manliness, which culminates in a discussion of “manly virtue.” In the book, he continues and develops his program of vindicating rational choice against both nihilism and deterministic invariability. “But what is virtue?” he asks. “Perhaps it is the perfection of the soul,” he answers, “not an easy thought in these times, but bracing, refreshing, restorative.”6 For Mansfield, manliness as a virtue is “the assertion of meaning when meaning is at risk.” It is rational assertiveness, not simply Nietzschean nihilism or Stoic unconcern. “The manly man thinks and asserts that he matters,” Mansfield claims, but he is not all that matters because, at the same time, “forms matter.” “Since human beings do

Harvey C. Mansfield

401

not have instincts enabling and compelling them to be perfect (like the perfect jackass), virtue is reasoned, reflective, deliberate rather than spontaneous.” Nature is a guide, he concludes, “but does not supply us with an uncontestable result. Our nature in the sense of our human good is not easy to discern or convey in a manner that closes off argument.”7 To restore attention to manliness is to make breathing room for an element of our humanity and possible excellence that has been suffocated under the weight of academic distortion and political correctness. It reopens the question of the substance and limits of nature. It also indicates how political philosophy can be useful as well as precise. Our own constitutional forms of liberalism “depend on, and at the same time nourish, manliness in a free people.” Thinking about statesmanship and manliness need not produce prudent or courageous action, but in Mansfield’s case it has. Over the course of his career, he has stood against developments in the academy that he correctly believed to be detrimental. Political science during the past fifty years has careened wildly along various approaches, most seeking the one true road. As it turns out, or as one could have seen in advance, this is a road to nowhere. How can we reach political understanding when our behavioralmathematical methods necessarily block our access to the central political phenomena? Mansfield (and others) fought this growing orthodoxy not just in words but in the thousand actions where most find it is easier to go along than to defend their own more fruitful paths. Courage of the intellect sometimes requires courage against the intellectuals. The new orthodoxy was at one time kept at bay by philosophical or humanistic approaches to government. But when the humanities are overwhelmed by historicist and deconstructionist views, the true objects of the social sciences are placed at risk. Mansfield placed himself against these currents, in lectures and articles, such as “Political Correctness and the Suicide of the Intellect,” and in standing, nearly alone among his Harvard colleagues, against the creation of a Women’s Studies major. Mansfield’s attempt at restorative academic reform also includes his well-known use of the ironic grade, which calls attention to grade inflation and its causes and effects. His academic courage is one of the characteristics that have earned him the life-long loyalty of generations of students. He shows us all that proper assertion belongs together with essential modesty and intellectual excellence.

NOTES 1. An earlier version of this article was first published on Humanities, May/June 2007, in conjunction with Harvey Mansfield’s Jefferson lecture.

402

Mark Blitz

2. Harvey C. Mansfield, “Party Government and the Settlement of 1688,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 937. 3. Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989), xx. 4. Harvey C. Mansfield, America’s Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 194. 5. Mansfield, America’s Constitutional Soul, ix. 6. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 297. 7. Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 203.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

BOOKS Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. The Spirit of Liberalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979; reprinted, University of Chicago Press, 2001. Thomas Jefferson: Selected Writings. Editor, with introduction. Wheeling, Ill.: H. Davidson, 1979. Selected Letters of Edmund Burke. Editor, with an introduction entitled “Burke’s Theory of Political Practice.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Translator, with introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Second edition, with corrections and a glossary, 1998. With Laura F. Banfield. Florentine Histories, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Translator, with introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power. New York: Free Press, 1989. America’s Constitutional Soul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Machiavelli’s Virtue. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. With Nathan Tarcov. Discourses on Livy, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Translator, with introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. With Delba Winthrop. Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville. Translator, with introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2001. Manliness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Italian trans. Virilità. Rizzoli, 2006. Dutch trans. Mannelijkheid. J. M. Muellenhoff, 2008.

403

404

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

ACADEMIC ARTICLES AND REVIEWS “Sir Lewis Namier Considered.” Journal of British Studies 2 (1962): 28–55. Review of Dimensions of Freedom, by Felix E. Oppenheim. Journal of Politics 24 (1962): 597–98. “Party Government and the Settlement of 1688.” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 933–46. “Rationality and Representation in Burke’s ‘Bristol Speech.’” In Rational Decision, edited by C. J. Friedrich, 197–216. Nomos 7. New York: Atherton Press, 1964. “Sir Lewis Namier Again Considered.” Journal of British Studies 3 (1964): 109–19. Review of Burke, Paine, and the Rights of Man: A Difference of Political Opinion, by R. R. Fennessy. The Burke Newsletter 6 (Spring 1965): 443–45. “Whether Party Government Is Inevitable.” Political Science Quarterly 80 (1965): 517–42. Review of The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher’s Reflections, by Yves Simon. The Burke Newsletter 7 (Spring 1966): 598–601. Review of The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume V: July 1782–June 1789, edited by H. Furber. Political Science Quarterly 81 (1966): 673–74. “Burke and Machiavelli on Principles in Politics.” In Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and the Modern World, edited by P. H. Stanlis, 49–79. Detroit, Mich.: University of Detroit Press, 1967. Review of Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic, by J. R. Pole. Studies in Burke and His Time 8 (1967): 793–99. “Burke on Christianity.” Studies in Burke and His Time 9 (1968): 864–65. “Comment on Mr. Plumb’s Paper.” In Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, edited by James Clifford, 135–38. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968. “Impartial Representation.” In Representation and Misrepresentation, edited by R. A. Goldwin, 91–114. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968. “Modern and Medieval Representation.” In Representation, edited by J. R. Pennock and J. Chapman, 55–82. Nomos 11. New York: Atherton Press, 1968. Review of Coleridge and the Idea of the Modern State, by David P. Calleo. Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 431–33. Review of The Growth of the British Party System, by Ivor Bulmer-Thomas. Political Science Quarterly 83 (1968): 473–74. “Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount,” and “Burke, Edmund.” In Encyclopedia Americana 4: 160, 793–95. New York: Americana Corporation, 1969. Review of The Concept of Representation, by Hanna Pitkin. Political Science Quarterly 84 (1969): 678–80. Review of Politics and Experience, edited by Preston King and B. C. Parekh. Studies in Burke and His Time 10 (1969): 1284–87. “Disguised Liberalism.” Public Policy 18 (1970): 605–19. “Machiavelli’s New Regime.” Italian Quarterly 13 (1970): 63–95. “Hobbes and the Science of Indirect Government.” American Political Science Review 65 (1971): 97–110. “Thomas Jefferson.” In American Political Thought, edited by M. Frisch and R. Stevens, 23–50. New York: Scribner, 1971. Reprinted in Thomas Jefferson: Selected Writings, edited by H. C. Mansfield, vii–xlii. Wheeling, Ill.: H. Davidson, 1979.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

405

“Necessity in the Beginning of Cities.” In The Political Calculus: Essays in Machiavelli’s Philosophy, edited by A. Parel, 101–26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972. “Party and Sect in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.” In Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought, edited by Martin Fleisher, 209–66. New York: Athenaeum, 1972. “Sound Advice from Yale.” Polity 5 (1972): 95–111. Review of Thomas Jefferson as Social Scientist, by C. Randolph Benson, and Thomas Jefferson: A Well-Tempered Mind, by Carl Binger. American Political Science Review 67 (1973): 982–84. Review of Tribunato e resistenza, by Pierangelo Catalano. Journal of Modern History 46 (March 1974): 129–31. Review of Studies on Machiavelli, edited by M. Gilmore. Renaissance Quarterly 27, no. 3 (1974): 321–22. Review of Corruption, Conflict, and Power in the Works and Times of Niccolo Machiavelli, by Alfredo Bonadeo, and Machiavelli and the Art of Renaissance History, by Peter Bondanella. Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1975): 68–70. Review of Polybius, by F. W. Walbank. Political Theory 3 (1975): 232–34. “Strauss’s Machiavelli.” Political Theory 3 (1975): 372–84. “Reply to Pocock: An Exchange on Strauss’s Machiavelli.” Political Theory 3 (1975): 402–5. “The Prestige of Public Employment.” In Public Employee Unions, edited by A. L. Chickering, 35–50. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1976. “The Right of Revolution.” Daedalus 105 (Fall 1976): 151–62. Review of The Social Thought of Rousseau and Burke: A Comparative Study, by David Cameron. Studies in Burke and His Time 17 (Winter 1976): 64–68. Review of Thomas Hobbes in His Time, edited by Ralph Ross, Herbert W. Schneider, and Theodore Waldman. American Political Science Review 71 (1977): 660–61. Review of The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, by J. G. A. Pocock. American Political Science Review 71 (1977): 1151–52. Review of History: Choice and Commitment, by Felix Gilbert. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9 (Summer 1978): 156–58. With Robert Scigliano. “Representation: The Perennial Issues.” Pamphlet published by the American Political Science Association, 1978. “The Media World and Democratic Representation.” Government and Opposition 14 (1979): 318–34. “On the Political Character of Property in Locke.” In Powers, Possessions, and Freedom: Essays in Honour of C. B. MacPherson, edited by A. Kontos, 23–38. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Review of John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty: Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution, by J. H. Franklin. Review of Metaphysics 32 (June 1979): 752–54. Review of Liberalism and the Modern Polity: Essays in Contemporary Political Theory, edited by Michael J. Gargas McGrath. American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 172–73. “Marx on Aristotle: Freedom, Money, and Politics.” Review of Metaphysics 34 (1980): 351–67.

406

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

Review of Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain, by H. T. Dickinson. William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, 37 (October 1980): 671–73. Review of The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought: From Antiquity to the Reformation, by G. W. Trompf. Review of Metaphysics 34 (December 1980): 400–402. “The Ambivalence of Executive Power.” In The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, edited by J. Bessette and J. Tulis, 314–34. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. “A Medley of ‘Mediology.’” Review of Le pouvoir intellectuel en France, by Regis Debray. Government and Opposition 16 (1981): 254–57. “Machiavelli’s Political Science.” American Political Science Review 75 (1981): 293–305. Review of The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation, by D. Marsh. Review of Metaphysics 34 (June 1981): 794–95. Preface to Essays in Political Philosophy, by J. E. Parsons, Jr, vii–x. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. “The Anti-Power Ethic.” Review of American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, by Samuel P. Huntington. Government and Opposition 17 (1982): 362–69. Review of Dissidence et philosophie au moyen age: Dante et ses antecedents, by Ernest L. Fortin. American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 270–71. “On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli’s Use of Stato.” American Political Science Review 77 (1983): 849–57. Review of The Practice of Political Authority, by Richard Flathman. Independent Journal of Philosophy 4 (1983): 180–81. Review of Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition, by N. Fiering. Review of Metaphysics 37 (September 1983): 116–18. “The Absent Executive in Aristotle’s Politics.” In Natural Right and Political Right, edited by P. Schramm and T. Silver, 169–96. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1984. “The Teaching of Citizenship.” PS: Political Science and Politics 17 (Spring 1984): 211–15. “Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law.” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 8 (1985): 323–26. “How Dangerous Is Machiavelli?” Review of Citizen Machiavelli, by Mark Hulliung. Review of Politics 47 (1985): 298–300. Preface to The Government of Poland, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by Willmoore Kendall, vii–viii. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985. “The Forms of Liberty.” In Democratic Capitalism? Essays in Search of a Concept, edited by Fred E. Baumann, 1–21. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986. “The Constitution and Modern Social Science.” The Center Magazine (September/October 1986): 42–53. “Choice and Consent in the American Experiment.” The Intercollegiate Review 2 (Spring 1987): 19–23. “The Modern Doctrine of Executive Power.” Presidential Studies Quarterly (Spring 1987): 237–52. Comment on “Aristotle’s Polis: A Community of the Virtuous,” by Lloyd Gerson. In Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, edited by J. Cleary, 226–28. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1987.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

407

“Edmund Burke.” In History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd ed., 687–709. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. “Hobbes on Liberty and Executive Power.” In Lives, Liberties, and the Public Good, edited by G. Feaver and F. Rosen, 27–43. London: Macmillan Press, 1987. “The Religious Issue and the Origin of Modern Constitutionalism.” In How Does the Constitution Protect Religious Freedom?, edited by Robert A. Goldwin and Art Kaufman, 1–14. Washington, D. C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1987. “Republicanizing the Executive.” In Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding, edited by Charles R. Kesler, 168–84. New York: Free Press, 1987. “Constitutional Fideism.” Review of Constitutional Faith, by Sanford Levinson. Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 1 (1988): 181–86. “Machiavelli and the Modern Executive.” In Understanding the Political Spirit, edited by Catherine H. Zuckert, 88–110. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. “Representative Government and Executive Power.” In Economy, Diplomacy, and Statecraft: Three Lectures on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution. Colorado College Studies 27 (1988): 25–36. “The Revival of Constitutionalism.” In The Revival of Constitutionalism, edited by James W. Muller, 214–27. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. “Social Science and the Constitution.” In Confronting the Constitution, edited by Allan Bloom, 411–36. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1990. “Between the New Deal and the Reagan Revolution.” Review of Congress, the President, and Public Policy, by Michael Mezey. Government and Opposition 24 (1991): 278–80. Introduction to Machiavel, L’art de la guerre. Paris: Flammarion, 1991. Review of The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe, by Robert Bireley. American Historical Review 97 (February 1992): 182. Review of Equality Transformed: A Quarter-Century of Affirmative Action, by Herman Belz. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1992): 423–25. “Executive Power and the Passion for Virtue.” In Studies in American Political Development 6 (1992): 217–22. “Human Rights in Emergencies.” Critical Review 6, no. 4 (1992): 575–85. “Political Parties and American Constitutionalism.” In American Political Parties and Constitutional Politics, edited by Peter W. Schramm and Bradford P. Wilson, 1–16. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992. Foreword to Priests as Physicians of Souls in Marsilius of Padua’s “Defensor Pacis,” by Stephen F. Torraco. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992. “Tough Times for the President.” Review of The Beleaguered Presidency, by Aaron Wildavsky. Review of Politics 54 (1992): 680–82. “The Great Edmund Burke.” Review of The Great Melody, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. The New Criterion 10 (November 1992): 8–11. Review of Machiavelli in Hell, by Sebastian de Grazia, and The Machiavellian Cosmos, by Anthony J. Parel. American Political Science Review 87 (1993): 764–65. “Professional Education and the Examined Life: Defining Terms.” In Technology and Responsibility, edited by Athanasios Moulakis, 1–9. Boulder, Colo.: College of Engineering and Applied Science, 1993.

408

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

“Returning to the Founders: The Debate on the Constitution.” Review of The Debate on the Constitution, edited by Bernard Bailyn. The New Criterion 12 (1993): 48–54. “The Silence of a Mechanism.” Review of The Silence of Constitutions; Laws, Men, and Machines; and American Political Ideas, by Michael Foley. Government and Opposition 28 (1993): 126–29. “Responsibility and Its Perversions.” In Individualism and Social Responsibility, edited by W. Lawson Taitte, 79–99. Austin: University of Texas, 1994. Also published in French in Démocraties, l’identité incertaine, edited by Chantal Millon-Delsol and Jean Roy, 112–20. Bourg-en-Bresse: Musnier-Gilbert, 1994. “Responsible Citizenship Ancient and Modern.” A pamphlet containing the 1994 Kritikos lecture. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1994. “The Unfinished Revolution.” In Three Beginnings: Revolution, Rights, and the Liberal State, edited by Stephen F. Englehart and John Allphin Moore, Jr., 9–30. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Reprinted in The Legacy of the French Revolution, edited by Ralph C. Hancock and L. Gary Lambert, 19–41. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. “Friends and Founders.” Review of The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, edited by James Morton Smith. The New Criterion 13 (May 1995): 69–72. “Democracy and Populism.” Society 32 (July–August 1995): 30–32. Reprinted in A New Moment in the Americas, edited by Robert S. Leiken, 27–30. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995. “Machiavelli and the Idea of Progress.” In History and the Idea of Progress, edited by Arthur Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and Richard Zinman, 61–74. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. “Political Theory as Historical Artifact.” Review of The Descent of Political Theory, by John G. Gunnell. Review of Politics 57 (1995): 372–74. “Self-Interest Rightly Understood.” Political Theory 23 (1995): 48–66. “The Twofold Meaning of Unum.” In Reinventing the American People, edited by Robert Royal, 103–13. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1995. “Passions et intérêts.” In Dictionnaire de Philosophie Politique, edited by Philippe Raynaud and Stéphane Rials, 453–57. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996. Foreword to Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, by Pierre Manent. English translation. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. “The Formal Constitution: A Comment on Sotorios A. Barber.” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 (1997): 187–89. “The Legacy of the Late Sixties.” In Reassessing the Sixties, edited by Stephen Macedo, 21–45. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Foreword to No Liberty for License, by David Lowenthal. Dallas: Spence Publishing, 1997. Foreword to Piety and Humanity, edited by Douglas Kries. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. “Some Doubts about Feminism.” Government and Opposition 32 (1997): 291–300. “Virilité et libéralisme.” Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25–42. Review of Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists, by Arlene Saxonhouse. American Political Science Review 92 (1998): 449–50. With Delba Winthrop. “Liberalism and Big Government: Tocqueville’s Analysis.” In Tyranny and Liberty, 1–31. London: Institute of United States Studies, 1999.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

409

Review of Machiavelli, by Maurizio Viroli. American Political Science Review 93 (1999): 964–65. With Delba Winthrop. “Translating Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” The Tocqueville Review 21 (2000): 153–64. “Bruni and Machiavelli on Civic Humanism.” In James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 223–46. “The Cuckold in Machiavelli’s Mandragola.” In Vickie B. Sullivan, ed., The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000, 1–29. “Majority Tyranny in Aristotle and Tocqueville.” In Peter Dennis Bathory and Nancy L. Schwartz, eds., Friends and Citizens: Essays in Honor of Wilson Carey McWilliams. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, 289–97. Introduction to Opium of the Intellectuals, by Raymond Aron. Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001, ix–xvi. With Delba Winthrop. “What Tocqueville Would Say Today.” Hoover Digest (Summer 2001) no. 3, 179–88. “L’Education du Prince de Machiavel.” In Ran Halèvi, Le Savoir du prince. Paris: Fayard, 2002, 69–80. “Political Correctness.” In Michael P. Foley and Douglas Kries, eds., Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach: Essays on Religion and Political Philosophy in Honor of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002, 257–70. “Uses of Ambition.” Review of Christopher L. Eisgruber, Constitutional Self-Government. In Times Literary Supplement, 19 July 2002, 29. With Delba Winthrop. “Reply to Our Critics.” French Politics, Culture, Society 21 (2003): 139–47. “The Christian Socrates.” Review of Ernest L. Fortin, Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and His Precursors. In Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2003, vol. 3, No. 4, 44–45. “Liberty and Virtue in the American Founding.” In Peter Berkowitz, ed., Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2003, 3–28. “The Captive Woman.” A sermon, in Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2004, vol. 4, no. 3, 65. “A More Demanding Curriculum,” in Essays on General Education in Harvard College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Fall 2004. Also in Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2004, 75–78. “Nature and Fact in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,” in Jean De Groot, Nature in American Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2004, 109–28. “Burke’s Conservatism.” In Ian Crowe, ed., An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the Life and Thought of Edmund Burke. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2005, 59–70. “The Manliness of Theodore Roosevelt.” In The New Criterion, March 2005, vol. 23, no. 7. Pp. 4–9. Reprinted as “Theodore Roosevelt, hèros viril.” In Commentaire, no. 112, Winter 2005–6. Pp. 1026–32. “Good and Happy.” Review of Happiness: A History, by Darrin M. McMahon; Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert. In The New Republic, 3 July 2006.

410

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

“What’s So Special About Democracy?” Review of John Dunn, Democracy: A History. In The New York Sun, 26 July 2006. “Rational Control.” In The New Criterion, September 2006, vol. 25, no. 1, 39–44. “Tocqueville’s New Political Science,” with Delba Winthrop, in Cheryl B.Welch, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 81–107. “The Forgotten Virtue.” Review of Linda R. Rabieh, Plato and the Virtue of Courage. In The Weekly Standard, 29 January 2007. “How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science.” 2007 Thomas Jefferson lecture sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In First Things, August–September 2007, 41–47. “Timeless Mind.” Review of Eugene R. Sheppard, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile; The Making of a Political Philosopher; and Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography. Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2008, 8:1, 23–26. “The Common Form of All the Virtues.” A sermon, in Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2008, 17.

POLITICAL WRITINGS “Defending Liberalism.” The Alternative: An American Spectator 7 (April 1974): 5–9. Reprinted in Orthodoxy: The American Spectator Anthology, edited by R. Tyrrell, 397–405. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. “Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime.” The Alternative: An American Spectator 8 (June 1975): 8–12. Reprinted in The New Egalitarianism: Questions and Challenges, edited by D. Schaefer, 66–78. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1979. “The American Election: Towards Constitutional Democracy?” Government and Opposition 16 (1981): 3–18. “The American Congressional Election.” Government and Opposition, vol. 18 (1983): 144–56. “The Forms and Formalities of Liberty.” The Public Interest, no. 70 (Winter 1983): 121–31. Reprinted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 1984–85, edited by R. Gastil, 179–90. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. “Too Much Charisma in the Executive?” The New Federalist Papers, The Claremont Institute, 14 March 1984. Reprinted in Waterbury, Conn. Republican, New York Tribune, Hatboro, Penn., Today’s Spirit. Also in The New Federalist Papers. Claremont, Calif.: The Claremont Institute, 1988, no. 26. “The Underhandedness of Affirmative Action.” National Review, 4 May 1984, 26–34. Reprinted in Racial Preference and Racial Justice, edited by R. Nieli, 127–40. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991. “The Teflon Presidency.” The New Federalist Papers, The Claremont Institute, 28 June 1985. Reprinted in The Waterbury Republican. Also in The New Federalist Papers. Claremont, Calif.: The Claremont Institute, 1988, no. 27. “The American Election: Entitlements Versus Opportunity.” Government and Opposition 20 (1985): 3–17. With Delba Winthrop. “A Summer Seminar on ‘The American Experiment.’” This Constitution, no. 9 (1985): 34–37.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

411

“Affirmative Action versus the Constitution.” In A Melting Pot or a Nation of Minorities, edited by W. Lawson Taitte, 91–110. Richardson, Tex.: University of Texas at Dallas, 1986. “Gouvernement représentatif et pouvoir exécutif.” Commentaire 9 (Winter 1986–87): 664–72. “The Partisan Historian.” Review of The Cycles of American History, by Arthur Schlesinger. The American Spectator, February 1987, 38–39. “Pride versus Interest in American Conservatism Today.” Government and Opposition 22 (1987): 194–205. “Debating Liberal Education.” The Harvard Salient, Commencement 1987, 10. “Beauty and the Beast.” Review of Men and Marriage, by George Gilder. Policy Review (Winter 1987): 76–78. “Constitutional Government: The Soul of Modern Democracy.” Public Interest, no. 86 (Winter 1987): 53–64. “Straussianism, Democracy and Allan Bloom, II: Democracy and the Great Books.” The New Republic, 4 April 1988, 33–37. Also published in French as “La Démocratie et les Grands Livres.” Commentaire 11 (Summer 1988): 492–96. “Harrington’s long road is, at last, not a lonely one.” Review of The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography, by Michael Harrington. Washington Times, 29 August 1988, D7. “The American Election: Another Reagan Triumph.” Government and Opposition 24 (1989): 28–38. “Le libéralisme et la vertu.” Commentaire 12 (Winter 1989–90): 682–83. “The State of Harvard.” Review of The University: An Owner’s Manual, by Henry Rosovsky. Public Interest, no. 101 (Fall 1990): 113–23. “Dewey, all-out democrat.” Review of John Dewey and American Democracy, by Robert B. Westbrook. Times Literary Supplement, 24 January 1992, 26. “The Vision Thing.” Times Literary Supplement, 7 February 1992, 3–4. “When the People Have Spoken.” Review of We the People, by Bruce Ackerman. Times Literary Supplement, 24 April 1992, 8. “Is America on the Way Down?” A symposium. Commentary, May 1992, 23–24. “Only Amend.” New Republic, 6 July 1992, 13–14. “Change and Bill Clinton.” Times Literary Supplement, 13 November 1992, 14–15. “Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., The Question of Conservatism.” Interview in Harvard Review of Philosophy 3 (Spring 1993): 30–47. “A Debatable Fusion.” Review of The Shaping of American Liberalism, by David F. Ericson. Times Literary Supplement, 23 July 1993, 26. “Returning to the Founders: The Debate on the Constitution.” New Criterion 11 (September 1993): 48–54. “Teaching in the Age of Sensitive Speech.” In Confidential Guide to Courses at HarvardRadcliffe 1993–94, 178. Cambridge: Harvard Crimson, 1993. “Liberalism in the Emperor’s New Clothes.” Review of Sexy Dressing, Etc., by Duncan Kennedy. Boston Book Review, Spring 1994, 9. “Equality and Comfort.” Review of Liberty, Justice, Order, by John Morton Blum. Times Literary Supplement, 10 June 1994, 13. “Why Equality Is Ridiculous.” Review of In Defense of Elitism, by William A. Henry III. Wall Street Journal, 6 September 1994, A10.

412

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

“Foolish Cosmopolitanism.” Reply to Martha Nussbaum. Boston Review, October–November 1994, 10. “Newt, Take Note: Populism Poses Its Own Dangers.” Wall Street Journal, 1 November 1994, A20. “Toward Liberalism, Capitalism—and Sanity.” Review of New French Thought: Political Philosophy, edited by Mark Lilla. Wall Street Journal, 21 December 1994, A12. “Hero or Anti-Hero: In the Ring with Professor Harvey Mansfield.” Interview in Boston Impact, Spring 1995, 21–22. “Un entretien avec Harvey C. Mansfield.” Le Monde, 10 April 1995, 12. “Real Change in the USA.” Government and Opposition 30 (1995): 35–47. “Veritas.” In The National Endowments: A Critical Symposium, edited by L. Jarvik, H. London, and J. Cooper, 13–15. Los Angeles: The Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 1995. “A Gay Makes His Case.” Review of Virtually Normal, by Andrew Sullivan. Wall Street Journal, 31 August 1995, A7. “Look, No Tocqueville!” Review of The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind. National Interest, no. 41 (Fall 1995): 99–102. “The National Prospect.” A Symposium. Commentary, November 1995, 85–86. “Enlightenment Supporter Sees a Dark Future for Democracy.” Review of On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy through an Age of Unreason, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. Washington Times, 10 December 1995, B8. “Was it really a myth? The persistence of individualism in America.” Times Literary Supplement, 9 February 1996, 7. “Less Means Less: The Second Coming of American Conservatism.” Review of Dead Right, by David Frum. Times Literary Supplement, 10 February 1996, 7. “An Idea and Its Consequences.” Review of Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, by Irving Kristol. National Review, 12 February 1996, 27–28. “A Powerful Friend.” Reader’s Digest, February 1996, 6. “Paterfamilias.” Review of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, by Richard Brookhiser. New Criterion 14 (March 1996): 62–65. “A Great-books Junior College.” In a symposium entitled “Nineteen Great Ideas for Repairing Civic Life.” Policy Review, March–April 1996, 23 “Harvard Loves Diversity.” Weekly Standard, 25 March 1996, 27–29. “Re-politicizing American Politics.” Weekly Standard, 29 July 1996, 24–26. “Bring Back Respectability.” In a symposium entitled “What one thing could we do now to improve the livability of our cities, towns and suburbs?” American Enterprise, November–December 1996, 67–68. “The unprincipled majority.” Review of Freedom’s Law, by Ronald Dworkin, Times Literary Supplement, 6 December 1996, 8. “The Tragedy of Max Weber.” Review of Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy, by John Patrick Diggins. Weekly Standard, 9 December 1996, 33–37. “The Election of 1996.” American Enterprise, January–February 1997, 28–31. “Karl Popper.” Panorama, 16 January 1997, 91. “Platonici e Reaganiani: Lobby con Filosofia.” Panorama, 27 March 1997, 121. “Ancient or Modern.” Review of Machiavelli’s Three Romes, by Vickie Sullivan. Times Literary Supplement, 11 April 1997, 30.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

413

“Backlash: The Trouble with Feminism.” Review of Women and the Common Life, by Christopher Lasch. Weekly Standard, 14 April 1997, 31–33. “Loveless Liberation.” American Enterprise, May–June 1997, 13–14. “Gentlemen’s Gentlemen: Edmund Burke’s Critique of Theory.” Times Literary Supplement, 11 July 1997, 15. “The Virtues of C-SPAN.” American Enterprise, September–October 1997, 46. “Men of Principle.” Review of Vindicating the Founders, by Thomas West. Wall Street Journal, 31 October 1997, A20. “Why a Woman Can’t Be More Like a Man.” Wall Street Journal, 3 November 1997, A22. “The City of Manent.” Review of The City of Man, by Pierre Manent. Weekly Standard, 15 June 1998, 31–33. “The Partial Eclipse of Manliness.” Times Literary Supplement, 17 July 1998, 14–15. Reprinted in Reproductive Health Matters, no. 12 (November 1998): 116–21. “Politiquement Correct,” Commentaire 21 (Fall 1998): 617–28. “Why a Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Women’s Quarterly, no. 17 (Autumn 1998): 4–6. “A Nation of Consenting Adults.” Weekly Standard, 16 November 1998, 35–37. Reprinted in The Clinton Files: The Best of the Weekly Standard 1995–1999, 102–4. “Defending Propriety.” In a symposium entitled “Acquitted.” Weekly Standard, 22 February 1999, 24–26. “Whatever Happened to Skepticism?” Review of New Federalist Papers, by Alan Brinkley, Nelson W. Polsby, and Kathleen M. Sullivan, and The Reopening of the American Mind, by James W. Vice. Times Literary Supplement, 26 February 1999, 11–12. “Consulting Old Nick.” Review of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, by Michael Ledeen, and The New Prince, by Dick Morris. Wall Street Journal, 10 June 1999, A24. Response to Francis Fukuyama’s “Second Thoughts.” National Interest, no. 56 (Summer 1999): 34–35. “Naturally Proud.” Review of The Great Disruption, by Francis Fukuyama. Times Literary Supplement, 16 July 1999, 12. “The Trouble with Stanley.” Review of The Trouble with Principle, by Stanley Fish. National Review, 7 February 2000, 46–48. “Where We Stand: The Conservative End of Education.” National Review, 3 July 2000, 25–26. “The Right to Be Respectable.” Review of Free Speech and the Politics of Identity, by David A. J. Richards. Times Literary Supplement, 11 August 2000, 30. “Be a Man.” American Enterprise, September 2000, 38–39. “What We’ll Remember in 2050.” In Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 January 2001, B16. Reprinted in Bush v. Gore, E. J. Dionne, Jr. and William Kristol, eds. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001, 340–41. “Cling to Principle.” American Enterprise, March 2001, 34. “Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts.” In Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 April 2001, B24. Reprinted in The Long Term View 5 (Spring 2002): 39–24. “The Best Book Ever Written on America.” Interview by Donald A. Yerxa in Books & Culture, July–August 2001, 21–22.

414

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

“The Founders’ Honor.” Review of Affairs of Honor by Joanne B. Freeman and Power versus Liberty by James H. Read. Weekly Standard, 3 September 2001, 31–33. “Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” In Booknotes: Stories from American History, Brian Lamb, ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2001, 66–70. “‘Those Hellhounds Called Terrorists.’” In Claremont Review of Books, vol. 11, no. 1, Fall 2001, 6. “Seth Benardete, 1930–2001.” In Weekly Standard, 3 December 2001, 39. “To B or Not to B?” In Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2001, 17. “How Harvard Compromised Its Virtue.” In Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 February 2003, B7–8. Also published as “Harvard’s Virtue” in Academic Questions, vol. 15, no. 4, (Fall 2002): 15–20. “Be a Man.” Review of Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism. Wall Street Journal, 29 October 2003. “Ronald Wilson Reagan.” In Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, eds. James Taranto and Leonard Leo. New York: Free Press, 2004. “Love in the Ruins.” Review of Steven E. Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Weekly Standard, 2 August 2004, 37–38. “An Undergrad in Full.” Review of Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons. In Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2004. “Bush Conservatore e Progressista.” In La Stampa, 5 novembre 2004. “Fear and Intimidation at Harvard.” In Weekly Standard, 7 March 2005. “Older and Wiser?” Contribution to a symposium in Weekly Standard, 19 September 2005. “How to Survive as a Conservative at Harvard.” In Harvard Salient, 22 September 2005. “The Cost of Free Speech.” Review of Donald Alexander Downs, Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus. In Weekly Standard, 3 October 2005. “Democratic Greatness in the Founding.” In Intercollegiate Review (Fall–Winter) 2005: 12–17; reprinted in Svetozar Minkov, ed. Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. “The People and their Power.” Review of Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy. In Wall Street Journal, 13 October 2005. “The Law and the President.” In Weekly Standard, 16 January 2006. “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Review of Bernard-Henry Lévy, American Vertigo. In Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2006. “A Sermon on Multiculturalism.” The Memorial Church, Harvard University, 16 February, 2006. “A New Feminism.” Imprimis, June 2006. Reprinted in Society: (January–February) 2007, 7–12. “Unmanly Athletes.” In Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2006. “Good and Happy.” Review of Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History; and Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness. In New Republic, 3 July 2006. “At Universities, Little Learned from 9/11.” Boston Globe, 13 September 2006. “Have It Your Way.” Wall Street Journal, 16 November 2006. “Democracy and Greatness.” Weekly Standard, 11 December 2006. “The Case for the Strong Executive.” Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2007, 21–24. Reprinted in Wall Street Journal, 2 May 2007.

Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

415

“Lacking Elevation.” Review of Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life. In New Criterion, May 2007, 64–67. “La Démocratie et la Providence.” In Elisabeth Dutartre ed., Raymond Aron et la démocratie au XXIe Siècle, Actes du colloque international, Paris, 11–12 mars 2005, 37–40, 52. Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2007. “A Plea for Constitutional Conservatism.” In Charles W. Dunn, ed., The Future of Conservatism. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2007, 43–55. “Atheist Tracts.” Weekly Standard, 13 August 2007. “The Tough-Guy Liberal: Lee Bollinger Tries to Take on Ahmadinejad.” Weekly Standard, 10 October 2007. “When the Giving Is Good: Saving Christmas from the Economists.” Weekly Standard, 14 January 2008. “Hook Up or Shut Up.” Review of Donna Freitas, Sex and the Soul. In Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2008.

Courses Taught by Harvey C. Mansfield

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 1960–1962 Political Science 209a, The Political Philosophy of Hegel Political Science 144a, British Government Political Science 293, The Political Philosophy of Burke Political Science 110a, Introduction to Political Theory

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1962–2008 Government 105, Classical and Modern Political Theory, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968 Government 112c, Forms of Government, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969 Government 208, Ancient and Modern Utopias, 1967 Government 106a, The History of Political Theory, Ancient and Medieval, 1967 (with Dennis Thompson), 1969, 1971 (with Mark Blitz), 1975, 1977, 1978 Government 106b, The History of Political Theory, Modern, 1968, 1970, 1972 (with Mark Blitz), 1974, 1976 (with Nancy Rosenblum), 1978, 1980 Government 208a, Politics and Eros, 1969 Government 208a, Machiavelli, 1969, 1972 Government 1a, Political Theory and Its Development, 1971 Government 208a, Plato’s Laws, 1971, 1981 417

418

Courses Taught by Harvey C. Mansfield

Government 1a, Introduction to Political Philosophy, 1972 (with Michael Walzer) Government 208a, Executive Power, 1973 Government 208b, Aristotle’s Politics Government 10, Introduction to Political Philosophy, 1975 (with Michael Walzer), 1977, 1993 (with Michael Walzer), 1980 (with Michael Walzer), 1980 (with Stephen Holmes), 1983 (with Stephen Holmes), 1984 (with Stephen Holmes), 1985 (with Shannon Stimson), 1993 Government 208a, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, 1975, 1977 Government 105, Liberalism and Marxism, 1976 Government 208a, Mirrors of Princes, 1977 Government 90m, The Theory and Practice of Modern Representative Government, 1978 Government 105a, Left and Right, 1979, 1981 Government 208ar, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1978 Government 208ar, Plato’s Statesman, 1981 Government 2080, Plato’s Laws, 1981 Moral Reasoning 13, Realism and Moralism, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1996 Government 1060, The History of Ancient and Medieval Political Theory, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1990 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1994 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1995 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1999 (with Peter Berkowitz), 2000, 2001, 2003 (with J. Russell Muirhead), 2006, 2007 Government 2085, Theory and Practice of Executive Power, 1982 Government 90a, Politics and Eros, 1983, 1986, 1987 Government 1050, Left and Right, 1985, 1992 Government 2080, Adam Smith, 1984 Government 2080, Liberal Constitutionalism, 1984, 1986 Government 1061, The History of Modern Political Theory, 1981, 1985 (with Michael Sandel), 1986, 1988 (with Michael Sandel), 1991, 1992 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1993 (with Michael Sandel), 1994, 1995, 1997 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1998 (with Peter Berkowitz), 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008 Government 2075, Aristotle’s Politics, 1985 Government 2075, Machiavelli, 1985 Government 2085, Revolutionary Constitutionalism, 1989 (with Ralph Lerner) Government 2075, Plato’s Republic, 1988 Government 2080, Democracy in America Today, 1991 Government 2027, Republics and Republicanism, 1996 Government 2080, From Machiavelli to Hobbes, 1992

Courses Taught by Harvey C. Mansfield

419

Government 2080, Politics and Rhetoric, 1995 Government 2030, Field Seminar in Political Philosophy, 1994 Government 1091, Liberalism and Conservatism in American Politics, 1995 (with George Will and Michael Sandel) Government 2080, Manliness, 1997, 2001, 2003 Government 1091, Debating American Politics, 1998 (with George Will and Michael Sandel) History 2472, Republics and Republicanism, 1999 (with James Hankins) Government 2052, The Political Philosophy of Plato, 2000 Moral Reasoning 17, Democracy and Inequality, 1999, 2002, 2006 Government 97a, Sophomore Tutorial, Constitutional Democracy in America, 2001–2008 Government 2080, The Political Philosophy of Spinoza, 2002 Government 1090, Issues and Theories, 2003 (with William Kristol) Government 1059, Natural Right, 2006 (with William Kristol) Government 90jl, The Mirror of Princes, 2007 (with William Kristol) Government 2080, Aristotle’s Politics, 2007 History 1474, Republics and Republicanism, 2007 (with James Hankins)

A Brief Biography of Harvey C. Mansfield

Harvey C. Mansfield, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, studies and teaches political philosophy. He has written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism, and in favor of a constitutional American political science. He has also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power and is a translator of Machiavelli and Tocqueville. In 2006 he published a book on manliness. He was chairman of Harvard’s government department from 1973 to 1977, has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships, and was on the Advisory Council of the NEH. In 2004 he received the National Humanities Medal from the President, and in 2007 delivered the annual Thomas Jefferson lecture sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has hardly left Harvard since his first arrival in 1949, and has been on the faculty since 1962. Some people, with some reason, call him a conservative.

421

Index

accident. See fortune acquisition, 97–105, 173–74; Aristotelian perspectives on, 33, 381; desire and, 95, 106, 116, 118; of glory, 95, 105–7; Machiavelli’s positive view of, 95, 97–119; Mansfield on desire and, 95; of material wealth, 95; Montaigne’s critique of Machiavellian, 97–119; of power, 95, 97–105, 173 Acts and Monuments (John Foxe), 269, 272 administrators: administrative role of government, 332, 344–45, 353n24, 384 advantage: Cicero on, 149, 158, 161–62; friendship as advantageous or serving self-interest, 25 32, 34, 50–51, 58–59, 60–61, 69; Montaigne on the advantages of power or glory, 101, 105, 106, 121n14; nobility and sacrifice of the advantageous, 58–60; and tactical decisions during war, 212–13; Tocqueville on political engagement and civic life as, 343 agathos, 15–18, 51. See also the good Alcibiades, 37

Alexander the Great, 107, 272 ambition: Cyrus as ambitious, 12, 26; and disrespectable desire to rule, 386; and gender, 326, 343; Hume’s assessment of Cromwell’s, 245–46, 245–56, 254, 264n31; Machiavellian constructions of, 118, 203–5; Mansfield on Aristotle’s purpose, 76; Montaigne’s criticisms of political, 97–99, 100, 117; Montaigne’s own pursuit of fame and glory, 121n23; political life and, 383, 386, 388; in Shakespeare’s works, 326; Tocqueville on, 340, 342–43, 356n51 America. See United States of America American Founders, 235–36, 241 American Revolution, 239, 367 America’s Constitutional Soul (Mansfield), 355n42, 400 Amour: in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 129, 131–32, 138, 143, 144–45 angels, 109, 184n41 anxiety: Montaigne on, 99, 111–12, 114; as personified in Gnidus, 141 Apollo: in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 137–38 423

424

Index

Apology (Plato), 5–6, 9–10, 15 Apology (Xenophon), 5–7, 9 appearance: glory and, 108 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 170 Árdal, P·ll, 306n16 Arendt, Hannah, 75, 302, 310n62–63, 331, 353n23, 354n27, 354n29 aristocracy: Aristotelian acceptance of regime, 84; commerce as protection from tyranny of, 308n51; military leadership and, 248, 258; Montaigne’s and “taming” of aristocratic warfare, 121n21; Montesquieu and, 231–32; as regime, 231–32; religion as “aristocratic inheritance,” 362; Tocqueville and, 329, 331, 335, 354n35, 362, 368–74 Aristophanes, 10, 73n41 Aristotle: on attention, 355n46; on claims of competing interests, 381–82; the “decent” person and friendship in, 50–60, 65–66, 71n20; and democracy as “unjust,” 84, 382; on desire, 51–52; on dunamis, kinesis, and energia as human attributes, 329; on equal right, 84; and freedom as constrained choice, 85–86; on friendship in Nicomachean Ethics, 43–74; on happiness, 40n19, 45, 59–60, 61–62, 64, 65–67, 70, 72n28, 81, 83; on justice, 84, 382; liberalism and, 75–94; Mansfield on Aristotle’s purpose, 76; on partisanship, 381–82; on the polis and the individual, 81; the self as conceived by, 51–53, 54, 58–59; on selfperception, 66–67, 74n44; on slavery, 82–83, 85–87; Strauss and link between Burke and, 316; Tocqueville and Aristotelian politics, 368 armies: Cromwell’s New Model Army, 248–49, 252–53, 262n13, 263n27; leadership of, 24, 29, 248, 258; Montesquieu on executive control

of, 235; professional, 248; Tocqueville on military coups as danger to democracy, 356n3 Arsace and Isménie (Montesquieu), 126 associations: civic, 357n65; civil associations, 342, 346, 347, 357n63, 357n65; freedom of association, 346; natural passions and creation of, 234; parties as, 391–92; political associations, 342, 345–47; private associations, 347; Astyages, 26–27, 28 atomization, 328, 332, 352n11, 354 attention: Aristotle on, 355n46; Mansfield on, 351; Tocqueville and citizens’, 327–28, 333, 336, 338–51, 351n11, 355n46, 356n47, 357n56, 358n69, 359n59 St. Augustine, 169, 273, 278–79 authenticity, 24, 85, 113–14, 254 authority: Aristotle and regime, 89; coercive, 90; democracy and suspicion of, 363, 371–72; fear and acceptance of, 193, 196; gender and civic, 134; of human being, 58; Hume on Cromwell and abuse of, 246, 248–49; individual liberty and freedom from external, 83–84; liberal constructions of, 90; liberty and contempt for, 298, 300; Machiavelli on, 187; Montaigne on power and, 99; Montesquieu on, 134, 231; religion as, 232, 256, 273–74, 280, 282, 361–64, 365, 366–67 aversion, 71n23, 80, 292, 301 Aymon, 122n30 Bacon, Francis: ambition and, 178; on artifice, 170; audience and intention of, 170; on charity, 172–73, 177, 180n3; Christianity and, 172–73, 176, 177–79; on experimentation, 171, 175, 177–78, 183n26; feigned faith and, 178; on “Human Empire” and quest for power, 175–76; on humanity, 175–76, 177, 178; The

Index Idols of the Tribe in, 176–77; on imagination, 171, 177; on ingratitude, 177; as Machiavellian, 167–84; on monsters and marvels, 170, 175–76, 177; natural history and, 172, 175; on nature, 170; prudence as conceived by, 179; on science, 169, 170, 174; subversive gender discourse used by, 182n24; on technology and power, 171–72 Barry, Brian, 390 beasts (the lion and fox in Machiavelli), ix, 110, 253 the beautiful: Hegel and soul as, 18; kalon, 13–17, 18, 45, 56; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 128, 132, 133–34, 138–39, 142, 144 Belleforest, FranÁois de, 269 Benardete, Seth, 399 Berger, Ben, x; article by, 325–58 The Bible, 178; biblical references in Hamlet, 276; Foxe and interpretation of, 280, 281; Luther’s translation and commentary on, 277–78, 280; as source for civil law, 282, 363 Blitz, Mark, xi; article by, 397–402 Bloom, Allan, 38, 125 the body: Aristotle’s perceiving self, 67–68, 74n44; equation of soul and, 307n24; liberalism and, 79–80, 83, 194; as slave to nature, 83 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John (1st Viscount), 384, 385, 386, 389 Bolotin, David, 82 Borgia, Cesare, 100,183n25 Braudy, Leo, 264n31 Bricke, John, 307n18 Britomart (Spenser, Faerie Queene), 326, 334 Broadie, Sarah, 73n35 Brutus (Cicero), 154 Burke, Edmund, 107, 398; as conservative, 313–15; the good as constructed by, 314; Mansfield on, 314–15; on the need for variety, 386–87; prescription and, 314–15;

425 “respectable” partisanship and, 368, 377–80, 385, 389, 390, 392; Strauss and link between Aristotle and, 316; Strauss on, 313–24; tradition and, 314, 320n4; “Burke and Machiavelli on Principle in Politics” (Mansfield), 314–15

Caesar (Julius), 107, 161 Calvin, John, 107 Cambyses, 39 cannibals, 113, 175 Catholicism. See Roman Catholic Church Cato the Younger, 165n27 “Cephisa and Amour” (Montesquieu), 144–45 chance. See fortune charity: Bacon on, 172–73, 177, 180n3; as God-like, 191; in Hobbes, 191 Charles I (King of England), 247–48, 254–55, 260, 265n41, 299 choice: freedom as constrained choice, 85–86; free will, 294–95, 303, 307n23; Machiavelli on constraints on, 186–87; Plato on eros vs. thumos and, 329; rational choice theory, 343, 356n55, 400; virtue and free, 83–84 Christianity: and appropriation of classical culture, 128; Bacon and, 172–73, 176, 177–79; censorship and, 128; equality and, 369, 371; Hume and rejection of, 263n22; as influence on partisanship and democracy, 360, 366, 368, 371–72, 374; Montesquieu and, 232, 238, 240, 243n31; Montesquieu’s appropriation of religious imagery, 144–45; as morality, 366; the Protestant Reformation, 176, 249–50, 269–70, 273, 276–83, 284n3, 285n4; in Tocqueville, 360, 363, 366, 368, 371–72, 374. See also Roman Catholic Church The Church. See religion Churchill, Winston, 322n20

426

Index

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 106, 123n38; as Academic, 149, 155–57; on dictatorship, 151; on honor and advantage, 149, 158, 161–63; and “idealized” republic, 149, 151–53; and legal limits on dictators, 151; Machiavelli and, 149–65; natural law and, 149, 159–61; oratory or rhetoric and, 153–57; on philosophy, 156; on the Roman republic, 150–53; stoicism and morality of, 149, 157–62 citizenship, 91, 99; Cicero’s “best citizen” as ruler, 152; democratic responsibilities, 393n10; in republics, 150; Tocqueville on attention and engagement, 327–28, 333, 336, 338–51, 343, 351n11, 355n46, 356n47, 357n56, 358n69, 359n59 civil society: Burke on the origins of, 314; cities founding and, 153, 18691, 192, 193, 195-96, 197n7, 198n16; civil servants and administration of, 384; Clausewitz’s principle of polarity and, 211–12; clockwork analogy used by Hobbes, 193; Hobbes and fear as foundation of civil society, 185, 193–94, 196–97, 199n30, 199n32; Hobbes on, 191–94, 199n30, 209; Machiavelli on the founding of cities, 185–86; Strauss on function of, 321 civil war, 199n32, 209, 257 claims: assertion of, 380–82 class: social, 205, 341; and conflicting claims, 381–82. See also aristocracy Clausewitz, Carl von, 201–2, 211–16, 218, 221 coercion, 89, 90, 92, 220, 294, 328, 331, 350, 357n58 Colish, Marcia, 158–59 commerce, 308n50; Hume and, 289, 298, 306n14, 308n50; and indirect rule, 239–40; language of commodity in Hamlet, 276, 279;

and liberty, 239; Locke and accumulation of wealth as wasteful and disruptive, 78; Montesquieu on, 236–40, 239–40, 241; as protection from tyranny of aristocracy, 308n51; as threat to engagement in selfgovernment, 339, 345, 348 confidence: modernity and lack of confidence in conservatism, 388; partisan, 387–90 conscience, 101, 119, 361, 363 conservatism: Burke and, 313–15; liberal conservatism, 389; modernity and, 388; in Strauss, 313–14; Strauss on Burke and, 313–15 constitutionalism: Hume on, 245–47, 257–60, 260n2, 297; Mansfield on, 355n42, 400; Montesquieu on, 229, 234–35, 240; political glory as incompatible with, 259–60 Constitution of Rome, 153 contagion: political sentiments and, 251, 253, 263, 263n25 Cooper, John, 73n32, 73n39 courage: as classical virtue, 72n24; Hume on, 255, 257, 299, 302; liberalism and, 89; Machiavelli on, 108; in Tocqueville, 325, 329, 337 Critobulus, 10–15, 17, 33–35, 39 Cromwell, Oliver: as dictatorial, 245, 263n29; Hume on character of, 245–46, 253–55, 264n30; and manipulation of religious enthusiasm, 249–53 Cyaxares, 25, 27, 29–30 Cyropedia (Xenophon). See Cyrus Cyrus: death of, 24; as exemplar of political ruler, 23–39; friendships of, 24–32; as gentleman, 12–13, 17; happiness of, 32; Lysander and, 12–13; as tyrant, 12–13, 27, 28; wealth of, 12–13; Xenophon and, 4–5; Xenophon’s depiction of, 23–24 death: in Aristotle, 52, 63, 303; Bacon’s consideration of Christianity and,

Index 177–79; Cicero’s stoic response to, 157; as enemy of Christian God, 178; in Hobbes, 78–79, 81, 192, 195, 383; as limit, 63, 73n35; in Locke, 79, 383; Montaigne on glory and, 110; of Socrates, 6–7; in Xenophon, 6–7, 19, 24 De cive (Hobbes), 191, 194–95 declaration of independence, 241 deliberation, 162, 291, 346, 381 Delphic oracle, 1, 4, 5–6, 9–10, 15, 137 democracy: confidence in, 387; energy distribution and, 331–32; hybrid regimes and, 382; individualism and, 371; long-term perspective required for success of, 327–28, 334–38; partisanship and, 360, 371–72, 374, 377–80, 382, 389; religion and, 360, 362, 365–67, 371; and suspicion of authority, 363, 371–72; Tocqueville on energy and, 325–26; Tocqueville on providence and, 368–69, 372, 374; Tocqueville on role of women in, 325–26, 337; as “unjust” in Aristotelian terms, 84, 382; as vulnerable to despotism, 331–32, 345, 349–50, 371 Democracy in America (Tocqueville, Mansfield and Winthrop trans.), 328, 332, 335, 341–42, 348, 359, 360, 362, 370 Demosthenes, 155 de Orco, Remirro, 98 Descartes, René, 229–30, 234, 363 desire: acquisition and, 95, 106, 116, 118; Bricke on, 307n18; as destructive of pleasure, 141(see also acquisition); for excess, 34, 78; friendship and, 43, 45, 47–49, 52, 56–57, 61, 62, 68–69; for glory, 106, 208; for the good, 49, 50–51; Hobbes on, 32, 208, 209; Hume on, 292, 301; Machiavelli on, 118, 150–51, 201, 203–4; Mansfield on, 95; materialism and, 341; Montaigne on three types of,

427

122n31; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 130, 140–42; Tocqueville on, 329, 341, 343 despotism: Arendt on, 354n27; Descartes’ scientifically based ethics and, 233; energy and; democracy’s resistance to, 331; Montesquieu’s rejection of, 231–32, 233, 239–40; soft vs. harsh, 332, 345, 350, 354n27; Tocqueville on democracy’s vulnerability to, 331–32, 345, 349–50, 371. See also dictatorship; tyranny dictatorship: Cicero on, 151; Cromwell and, 245, 263n29; Roman, 151. See also tyranny Diet of Worms, 270, 275 dignity. See human dignity Diogenes Laertius, 3 discipline: democracy and loss of, 327; as per Foucault, 217, 219, 222 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 203, 217–23 Discourses on Livy (Machiavelli, Mansfield and Tarcov trans.), 150–51, 155, 156, 185, 187–91, 196, 201, 204–5 discussion: and deliberation in republics, 162; Montaigne on value of, 103–4 disillusionment: party government and, 385–87, 389–90 Donne, John, 140 Dougherty, Janet, ix; article by, 229–44 Due, Bodil, 23 Duffy Eamon, 286n14 Durkheim, Émile, 333, 354n30 duty, 92, 117, 158, 261n10, 292–93, 301, 306n16, 344 Dworkin, Ronald, 390 Educating the Prince (Blitz and Kristol), xi The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Hobbes), 201, 207 Elizabeth I (Queen of England), 269–70, 281, 299

428

Index

embryonic stem cell research, 183n26 emotion. See passion empiricism: Bacon and, 172, 176 energy: Tocqueville’s conception of, 328–34; attention and focus of, 338–39; civic engagement and, 342–48; collective energy, 330–31; commerce and, 339; as gender neutral, 325–26; limits or restraint and, 326; vs. Aristotle’s dunamis, kinesis, and energia, 329 enlightenment, 172, 229–30, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 250–51, 335, 385, 387 enmity: friendship and, 34–35, 38–39; human discontent as source of, 118, 203; partisanship and, 378 enthusiasm: Cromwell and manipulation of religious enthusiasm, 246, 250–53, 255; as destabilizing, 289; Hume on, 247, 249–53, 257, 289–90, 296–305, 310n59; imagination and, 290–91; liberty and, x, 297–98; prudence and, 290, 299; self-interest and, 298–99; superstition as parallel to, 297; as threat to security, 92; as unrestrained moral agency, 290–91 environmentalism, 174–75, 184n41 equality: Aristotle on natural inequality, 84–85; Catholicism and, 371; Christianity and, 369, 371; democracy and, 84, 369–70; (equal individual rights) as liberty and foundation of liberalism, 76–77; Hobbes and equal individual rights, 77; Montesquieu on women and, 134; social equality linked to isolation of the individual, 341; Tocqueville on, 328, 341, 369–70 eros: Amour in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 129, 131–32, 138, 143, 144–45; as distinct from philia, 31; friendship and, 31, 32, 55, 69 and law in Montesquieu, 138; as source of enmity, 34; vs. thumos, 329

essaying, as per Montaigne: as contest, 103–4, 105; as self-exploration, 103, 113, 115, 116, 120n8, 122n23 the Eucharist, 275, 276, 277, 280, 283, 286n14 Euthydemus, 35–36 evil: as constant in Machiavelli’s view, 188; fear as, 88; free will and problem of, 307n23; Hobbes on, 167, 193–94, 204; as illusive ideal, 169; Machiavelli as teacher of, 109; as subjective, 167; summum malum, 169, 195; tyranny or oppression and, 169 Evrigenis, Ioannis D., ix; article by, 185–99 executive power, 151; constitutional, 258, 400; Hume on Cromwell and, 245–65; Mansfield on, 399, 400; Montesquieu on executive control of armies, 235 exotericism, 322n13–14 experimentation, 171, 175, 177–78, 183n26 factions: Cromwell’s use of factionalism, 250, 252, 257; Hume on, 256–57; Montaigne on political instability and, 101. See also parties, political Faerie Queene (Spenser), 326 Fairfax, Thomas, 255–56 faith. See religion fanaticism, fanatics: Hume on enthusiasm, 247, 249–53, 257, 304, 310n59; Montesquieu and cultivation of moderation, 234; as threat to liberty, 304 fear: as evil, 88; and hatred, 151, 168; Hobbes and fear as foundation of civil society, 193–94, 196–97, 199n30, 199n32; Hume and source of, 307n23; liberalism of, 88–89; Machiavelli and instrumental use of, 114, 151, 168, 190, 193–94, 201, 224; Montesquieu on, 142, 231; as primary political passion, 231;

Index tyranny or despotism and, 231, 254, 264n36 Federalist Papers (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), 101, 240, 332, 355n36, 368 Fiorina, Morris, 388 first principles, 381, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388 Florentine Histories (Machiavelli, Banfield and Mansfield trans.), xi, 359 fortune: Cromwell’s career as accident of circumstance and character, 246, 263n29; fortuna (circumstance), 246, 259–60; glory as dependent upon, 106, 108; Machiavelli and control of, 106–7, 259; Montaigne on fortune as obstacle in pursuit of glory, 106–7 Fott, David S., ix; article by, 149–65 Foucault, Michel de, 201, 202–3, 216–25 Foxe, John: Elizabeth I’s rule as context for, 269–70, 281–82; “History of Doctor Martin Luther” as source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 269–87 the fox (in Machiavelli), ix, 110, 253 France: distribution of political power in, 229, 235; revolution in, 245, 313, 315, 340, 366; Tocqueville’s view of, 328, 329, 344–46, 347, 354n35 Franklin, Benjamin, 357n66 fraud, 107–8, 114, 120n5, 190, 191; Hume on Cromwell and, 246, 264n31; magic as, 171; prophecy and, 178 freedom: Aristotle on spiritedness (thumos) and, 353n16; of association, 346; commerce and, 239–40; as constrained choice in Aristotle, 85–86 (see also slavery); liberal anti-regime and establishment of free society, 90; Machiavelli on choice and constraints on, 186–87; Montaigne on link between political stability

429

and, 101–2; Montesquieu on constitutional government and, 229, 234–35, 240; Montesquieu on Greek homoeroticism and, 145n12; of religion (religious toleration), 263n22, 366–67, 398; republics and the provision of liberty, 162; selfexploration and, 114; Tocqueville on energy as essential to, 330; Tocqueville on religion and, 362. See also liberty French revolution, 245, 313, 315, 340, 366 friendship: as advantageous or serving self-interest, 26–32, 50–51, 58–59, 60–61, 69; altruism and concern for the friend, 26, 44–45, 49–50, 69; characteristics of friends as per Aristotle, 50; “complete” friendship, 25–26, 29, 37, 46–49; as creative act, 57; Cyrus as friend, 24–32, 38–39; enmity and, 34–35, 38–39; eros and, 31, 32, 55, 69; eros as distinct from philia, 31; the friend as another self, 54–61, 67; of the good, 25, 46–49; goodwill and, 55, 56–57; and happiness, 61–62, 67, 70; as incompatible with rule, 30, 38, 102–3, 104–5; lack or sense of incompleteness and desire for, 43, 45, 52, 62; as love relationship, 45–47, 48–49, 52, 54–57, 135; as means of self-improvement or striving toward the good, 50–51, 60–61; Montaigne on, 102–3; mutual esteem as basis of, 25, 29–30; as natural, 43–45, 61–66, 69–70; as necessity, 43; nobility of, 58–60; with oneself, 49–56; philosophizing as practice of, 36–37; as pleasure, 25, 34–35, 48–49, 56, 59, 62; politics and indiscriminate, 37; as possession or wealth, 32–33; reciprocity of relationship, 25, 32–33; between the ruler and the ruled, 28; as selfdiscovery and self-knowledge,

430

Index

68–69; similarity and, 25, 29, 34, 44–49; Socrates as friend, 38–39; Socrates as friend and gentleman, 32–38; Socrates on wealth and, 11; in Socrates’s works, 32; as utilitarian (on account of the useful), 25–26, 43, 59; Xenophon on, 23–39 Gamm, Gerald, 357n65 Garsten, Bryan, x; article by, 359–75 gender: Bacon’s subversive discourse regarding, 182n24; female protagonists in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 132, 134–35, 138–42; femininity and acceptance of limits, 334; metrosexuality, 325–26; Montesquieu and inclusion of women in humanity, 125–26; Montesquieu and loss of sexual difference, 135–36; Montesquieu’s new model of womanhood, 138–39; Tocqueville on role of women in democracy, 325–26, 337; Tocqueville’s energy and, 325–26; women and civic authority in Montesquieu, 134 the gentleman: as class exhibiting both beauty or nobility and good (kalos k’agathos), 16–17, 18; Cyrus as, 12, 24–32; divine approval and, 20–21; friendship and, 24–32, 34; happiness of, 13; household management and, 10–11, 17–20; Ischomachus as, 14–15, 18–20; Montaigne on talent and, 103; morality of, 18; Socrates as friend and, 32–38; vs. the tyrant, 13, 17–18 George III (King of England), 384 Gera, Deborah Levine, 23 The Ghost (character in Hamlet), 273–74, 278–79, 281 Glaucon, 167 glory, 95; Bacon and, 178–79; as dependent on appearance, 108; fortune and the obscurity of Aymon, 122n30; Hobbes on the desire for, 77, 207–8, 209; Machiavelli and

glory as the greatest good, 96; Montaigne on pursuit of, 95–96, 105–11, 112, 116–18, 121n23 Godolphin, Francis, 170 gods: Bacon and imagination as imitation of, 177; friendship not required by, 49–50; and the power to undo the past, 182n20; Xenophon on divination as abdication of human responsibility, 23–24. See also religion; specific gods the good: agathos, 15–18, 51; Aristotle on diligence in pursuit of, 15; Burke and the established as political good, 314–15; as characteristic of the gentleman, 15–17, 18; friendship and, 25, 46–51, 60–61; harm as unintentional companion of, 169–70; limits and, 63–65 the good life: Aristotle on, 43–44, 65, 69; artful rule and the, viii; friendship as necessary for, 43–44, 70; limits and, 63–64; Montaigne on self-exploration and, 111–17; in Xenophon, 23–24, 40n9, 41n42 goodwill: as basis of friendship, 25–26, 27, 28; friendship and, 55, 56–57; glory as means of attaining, 106 gratitude/ingratitude, 177 Gray, Vivienne, 23 Greg, W. W., 286n16 Haigh, Christopher, 271, 285n7 Hamilton, Alexander, 235, 355n36 Hamlet (Shakespeare): allusions to law in, 280, 282; biblical references in, 276; commerce, language of commodity in, 276; English political environment as context for, 279; The Ghost in, 273–74, 278–79, 281; “History of Doctor Martin Luther” as source for, 269–87; incest theme in, 282, 287n22; language in, 274, 276, 277, 283; names of characters in, 273, 278; sources of play, 269–87

Index happiness: Aristotle on, 40n19, 45, 59–60, 61–62, 64, 65–67, 70, 72n28, 81, 83; in Bacon’s New Atlantis, 174; gender specificity of, 139; as the good, 64; Hume on, 301; liberalism and, 77; Mansfield on, 400; Montaigne’s self-knowledge and, 100, 113–14, 116–17; nature and, 81; power as means to achieve, 100, 118; Socrates and the link between the good and the beautiful and, 14–15; Socrates as happy, 37; Stoicism and, 159; vanity and, 236; virtue and, 400; worthiness of the individual, 14, 17; Xenophon on, 12–14, 17, 20–21, 32, 37 harangues, 262n20 Harvey, Gabriel, 282 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18; Strauss and, 321n9 Helen of Troy, 133 Henry VIII (King of England), 270, 277, 281, 282, 286n14 Herdt, Jennifer, 255, 264n31 the hero: liberalism and, 89; monsters and the Baconian hero, 175, 177, 182n19 Herodotus, 134 Hesiod, 138 Histoire Vèritable (Montesquieu), 126 historicism, 248, 315, 321n10 history: Hobbes and, 192, 198n20; Machiavelli the relationship of the past to the present, 187–89 History of Dense and Rare (Bacon), 172 History of England (Hume), 289; Cromwell as subject in, 245–60 History of Life and Death (Bacon), 172 History of the Winds (Bacon), 172, 174–75 Hobbes, Thomas: charity, 191; on civil war, 199; on equal individual rights, 77; on evil, 167; on fear as foundation of civil society, 193–96, 199n30, 199n32; fraud and, 191; on glory, 77, 207–8, 209; happiness in, 32; on illumination and reason,

431

191–92; on natural rights, 77–81; on slavery, 94n13; slavery condemned in, 82–83; on state of nature, 80, 192, 193–97, 208, 209, 210; zero-sum formulation of power, 207–11; zero-sum formulation of power dynamics, 202 home: as constructed by Montaigne and Machiavelli, 112–17 honor: Cicero on honorable action as advantageous, 149, 158, 161–63; Montaigne on, 105, 107; Montesquieu on, 231, 232, 239; as primary political passion, 231; as spur to pursuit of liberty, 371; Stoic constructions of, 159 hope, 52, 68 Housman, A. E., 142 Hulliung, Mark, 161, 162, 165n32 human agency: Hume on, 253, 289–311 The Human Condition (Arendt), 75–76 human dignity, 86, 232, 301, 302 humanism, 184n45 humanity: Bacon on, 175–76, 177, 178; Hume and humanized morality, 293; Montesquieu and inclusion of women in, 125–26; Montesquieu on Christianity and, 238, 240; as part of nature, 171. See also human nature human nature: Aristotle’s on dunamis, kinesis, and energia as human attributes, 329; Burke and human motives, 386; in Hume, 291–92, 306n16; Machiavelli’s understanding of, 203–4; Rousseau’s natural man, 113 Hume, David; authorial intent of, 305n2; on character, 295–96, 302–3; Christianity rejected by, 263n22; on commerce, 289, 298, 306n14, 308n50; on constitutionalism, 245–47, 257–60, 260n2, 297; on courage, 255, 257, 299, 302; on Cromwell, 245–65; on desire, 292, 301; on enthusiasm,

432

Index

247, 249–53, 257, 289–90, 296–305, 310n59; on human agency, 289–311; on hypocrisy, 254–56, 264n31; on liberty, 289–90; on Machiavelli, 246; on mercenary armies, 247–49; on moderation, 289, 296, 298, 300, 304–5; on moral agency, 290–96, 300–304, 307n30, 309n59; moral science of, 289–90, 291, 293, 300–301, 305n2; on moral sentiment, 291–92, 298, 301, 305n1, 306n9; natural right(s) and, 297, 298, 308n36; on peace, 304; on religious enthusiasm or fanaticism, 247, 249–53, 257, 297, 304, 310n59; on resistance, 290, 297–99, 297–302, 308n36, 308n37; skepticism and, 309n59; on slavery, 248, 292, 296–97; sympathy in, 251, 263n25, 290, 291, 293; on will, 292, 294–95, 296, 303, 307n18 hypocrisy, 252, 253–57, 264n31 imagination: Bacon and imagination as imitation of God, 177; Bacon on fancy and magic, 171; enthusiasm and, 290–91; “imaginary republics,” 151–52, 229; Montaigne on fancy and, 110, 111–12, 113, 118, 229; Shakespeare’s political, 270, 273, 276, 277–78 immortality, 52, 175 impartiality, 378 independence, 86–87, 235, 329, 333 Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum), 120n3 individualism: atomization, 328, 332, 352n11, 354; collective energy as more productive than individual effort, 330; democracy and, 371; and isolation as threat to democracy, 328, 340; as neglect of sexual difference by early liberals, 126; tyranny and, 181n6 the individual: Aristotle and agency of, 85–87; Aristotle and relationship of

political community to, 81, 85; liberal individualism, 76–77, 83–85, 87, 91–93; liberalism and, 91–93; institutions, 329–30, 345, 361, 386; parties as, 377 interest: claims of competing, 381–82; party interests and regime instability, 382; perspective and long-term view of, 327; public interest, 357n58; war and conflicting, 210–14. See also attention; self-interest James, William, 356n47, 358n73 James I (King of England), 170 James II (King of England), 299 James VI (King of Scotland), 270, 281 jealousy, 131, 141–42 Jesus Christ, 232, 240, 277, 280, 369 Johnson, Samuel, 271–72, 284n1 judgment: Aristotle and, 44, 50–51, 55–56, 66, 83–84, 86, 378; Cicero and, 158, 161; impartiality and, 378; Montaigne and, 115; Montesquieu and, 229, 234, 235, 237, 239–40; Stoic constructions of, 158; Tocqueville and, 334, 335, 346, 372–73; Venus as judicial figure in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 132–33 justice: and Aristotle, 84; in Cicero, 153; as contractual in Hobbes, 80; democracy as “unjust” in Aristotelian terms, 382; Hume on Cromwell’s practice of, 167–68; liberal constructions of, 88, 90; in Montesquieu, 138; in Plato, 167–68; republics and possibility of, 150, 162 Kant, Immanuel, 77, 89, 309n54 Katherine of Aragon, 282 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 300–301, 310n61 knowledge. See self-knowledge; wisdom Krause, Sharon R., x; article by, 289–311; introduction by, vii–xii Kristol, William, xi

Index Lacan, Jacques, 123n36 Lambert, John, 264n33 language: Bacon’s use of gendered language, 182n24; in Hamlet, 274, 276, 277, 283; Montaigne on language as obstruction, 115 Laud, William (Archbishop of Canterbury), 252, 253 law: allusions to law in Hamlet, 280, 282; Burke’s prescription as natural, 314–15; Cicero and Stoic natural, 149, 151, 159–61; and Eros in Montesquieu, 138; as the general will, 235, 367; as human reason, 231; moral virtue as product of, 85, 87; as positive rather than natural in origin, 80, 81, 90, 256; religion as source for civil, 282, 363; tyranny and rule without, 26–27, 28, 151 legitimacy: political, 84, 315, 321, 360 Lenzner, Steven, x; article by, 313–24 Leviathan (Hobbes), 194–95, 207–8, 210 Levine, Alan, ix; article by, 95–123 liberalism: as “anti-regime,” 87–88, 90; Aristotle and, 75–94; courage and, 89; of fear as per Shklar, 88–89; liberty (equal individual rights) as foundation of, 76–80, 83–87; limited government and, 87–91; nature and, 89; slavery rejected by, 82–83; value pluralism and, 390–91 liberty: as choice in Aristotle, 83–87; and commerce, 239; fanaticism as threat to, 304; Foucault on refusal and, 222–23; as foundation of liberalism, 83–87; as freedom from external authority, 83–84; Hume on enthusiasm and, 296–305; independence as distinct from, 235; Montesquieu on limits of, 92, 231, 235–36; republics and the provision of, 162; universal human emancipation, 224–25; zero-sum formulation of, 224–25. See also freedom

433

limited government, 77, 87–91, 296–97 limits: Aristotle and, 63–65, 73n35, 83; and direction of Tocqueville’s energy, 326, 333–34; femininity and acceptance of, 334; Machiavelli and admission of, 186, 189; Montesquieu on liberty and limits, 92, 231, 234–35; religion and, 362; self-restraint, 56, 58, 112, 325, 365–66, 381 Locke, John: on civil resistance, 298–99, 309n52; modern politics and, 383, 390; on natural rights, 77–80, 298–99, 309n52, 390; on slavery, 82–83, 94n13; on statesmanship, 324n29; Strauss on, 323n29 love: Amour in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 129, 131–32, 138, 143, 144–45; friendship as love relationship, 45–47, 48–49, 52, 54–57, 135; as political instrument, 151; self love, 58–59 varieties of love in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 135–37, 138, 139–41 Lucretius, 100 Luther, Martin, 300; Diet of Worms, 270, 275; Foxe’s play about, 269–87; indulgences, 276, 277 Montaigne and, 107; Ninety five theses, 276, 277; predestination, 276; as reformer rather than revolutionary, 269–70, 280; on the sacraments, 275, 282, 286n14; scholarship and theology of, 277–78; Wittenberg, 270, 274 Macaffrey, Wallace, 281 Machiavelli, Niccolò: on acquisition, 95, 97–119; on ambition, 118, 203–5; on audience and intentions, 185–86, 192, 259; authenticity and, 114; beasts (the lion and fox), ix, 110, 253; on choice, 186–87; Cicero and, 149–65; on courage, 108; on

434

Index

desire, 118, 150–51, 201, 203–4; on disease, 174; on distinction between hatred and fear, 151; “effectual truth” of, 149, 153, 158, 365; on evil and good as constants, 188; and fear as political instrument, 114, 151, 168, 190, 193–94, 201, 224; fraud and, 120n5, 190; and glory as the greatest good, 96; Hume on, 246; “idealized” republic rejected by, 151–52; as infamous, 109; Mansfield on, 95, 151, 163n3, 164n4, 185, 314–15, 359, 399–400; modesty of, 192; Montaigne’s critique of, 95–123; on neglect of classical knowledge, 187; and peace, 208–9, 259–60; on political rejuvenation, 189–90, 192; on prudence, 188, 190; as psychological advisor, 190–91; on the relationship of the past and the future, 187–89; on republics, 151–52, 204–6; Rome in works of, 150–51, 153, 189, 190, 196, 197n8, 198n16, 205–6, 224; on safety and the requirement of “alterations,” 189; as servant of Satan, 170; skepticism and, 110, 153–56, 163; as teacher of evil, 184n46; and war as constant and universal, 202–4, 208 Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders (Mansfield), 399 Madison, James, 251, 332 magic, 171 Malebranche, Nicolas, 121n23 Manent, Pierre, 244n35 manliness: Mansfield on Cicero’s promotion of philosophy as, 156 Manliness (Mansfield), 325, 400 Mansfield, Harvey C.: as academic reformer, 401; on acquisition and desire, 95; America’s Constitutional Soul, 355n42, 400; on Aristotle, 76; on attention, 351; awards and honors, 421; bibliography of works, 403–15; biography of, 421; on Burke, 314–15; “Burke and

Machiavelli on Principle in Politics,” 314–15; on Cicero, 151, 153, 156, 163n3; on constitutionalism, 355n42, 400; courses taught by, 417–19; Democracy in America (trans.), xi, 328, 332, 335, 341–42, 348, 359, 360, 362, 370; as educator, vii, x, 351, 397–401; on executive power, 399, 400; Florentine Histories (trans.), xi, 359; on justice, 150, 153; on Machiavelli, 95, 151, 163n3, 164n4, 185, 314–15, 359, 399–400; Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders, 399; Manliness, 325, 400; on parties and partisanship, 359, 378–79, 384, 385, 389, 394n30, 398–99; publications by, 403-415; on republics and the common good, 150; Spirit of Liberalism, 400; statesmanship and, 400; Statesmanship and Party Government, 378–79, 398; Strauss and, 399; on subversive communication, 283; Taming the Prince, 399; on Tocqueville, 399–400; as translator, xi, 399–400; on virtue, 88, 400–401; Marlowe, Christopher “Kit,” 281; martyrdom, 262n16; martyrology, Foxe’s “Monumenta Martyrum,” 269 masculinity. See manliness materialism: in Tocqueville, 328, 340–42, 348, 356n50, 365; wealth in Xenophon, 12–13 McFedries, Paul, 352n5 McGrail, Mary Ann, viii; article by, 269–87; introduction by, vii–xii Medici, Lorenzo de, 170, 190 medicine: Bacon on, 170–71, 174, 183n35; embryonic stem cell research, 183n26 Melanchthon, Phillip, 273, 286n13 metrosexual: use of term, 351, 352n5 military leadership: aristocracy as, 248, 258; household management and, 24; professional armies, 248 Milton, John, 184n41 Mitchell, Joshua, 353n21, 354n30

Index moderate government: Montesquieu and, 229–30, 231–32, 235 moderation: and democracy in Tocqueville, 337–38; Hume and, 289, 296, 298, 300, 304–5; in Montesquieu, 231, 234, 235–36, 239, 241; self-interest and, 298; Strauss’s depiction of Burke as immoderate, 317; as virtue, 54, 71n23; in Xenophon, 23–24, 37 modernity: and ethical tyranny, 256; Rousseau and crisis of modern natural right, 315–16; self-interest and modern politics, 383 modesty, ix, 126; of Machiavelli, 186, 192; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 130–31, 133, 136, 140, 143, 144 monsters: and the Baconian hero, 175, 177, 182n19 Montaigne, Michel de: on the advantages of power or glory, 101, 105, 106, 121n14; on ambition, 97–99, 100, 117; on anxiety, 99, 111–12, 114; on Catholicism, 119n3, 371; critique of Machiavellian acquisition, 95–123; on essaying of one’s self and selfknowledge, 103, 123n38; on fraud, 120n5; on glory, 95–96, 105–11, 112, 116–18, 121n23; on happiness, 100, 113–14, 116–17, 118–19; home as constructed by, 112–17; on honor and worth as the result of essaying contests, 105, 107; on imagination or fancy, 110, 111–12, 113, 118, 229; on language as obstruction, 115; on morality, 116; political career of, 120n6; on political power, 97–105; Rousseau and, 122n23; on self-interest, 96, 116; self-knowledge and essaying of one’s self, 96, 103, 113–15, 116, 120n8, 122n23; on Seneca, 96; on Socrates, 123n38; on soul, 113–14; on talent, 103; on toleration and political stability, 101–2; on

435

tranquility, 99–102, 110, 114, 117; utopianism and, 96, 113, 129–30; on virtue, 116, 117; on will, 116, 123n33 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de: as anti-Machiavellian, 229, 238, 240, 241; and aristocracy, 231–32; audience awareness of, 128–29, 145n6; authorial intent of, 239; Christianity and, 232, 240, 242n14; cultural inheritance and, 127–28; Descartes and, 229–30, 233, 234; on despotism or tyranny, 230, 231–32; on honor, 231, 232, 239; inclusion of women in humanity by, 125–26; indirect government and, 239; on judgment, 132–33, 229, 234, 235, 237, 239–40; on liberty, 92, 229, 230–36, 239, 240, 241–42; on the limits to liberty, 92, 231, 234–35; on moderate government, 229–32, 231, 234–35, 240–42; as poetic philosopher, 125; and pose as “translator,” 127–28, 145n6; and slavery, 230, 238, 240, 243n31; The Temple of Gnidus and education of the sentiments, 125–46; on will, 230. See also The Temple of Gnidus (Montesquieu) “Monumenta Martyrum” (Foxe), 269 morality: Christianity as, 366; Cicero’s stoicism and moral flexibility, 157–62; of the gentleman (kalos k’agathos), 18; Hume, and demystification of moral agency, 290–96, 300–304, 307n30, 309n59; Montaigne on, 116; Montesquieu on, 92–93; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 127; moral agency in Aristotle, 86; religion as moral training, 362 Moses, 106, 109 Muirhead, Russell, x; article by, 377–94 natural history: Bacon and, 172, 175 natural law: Burke and, 315; in Cicero, 149, 159–61; Hobbes on, 191;

436

Index

Montesquieu’s “laws of nature,” 230, 231 natural philosophy, 10, 96, 174, 176–77 natural right: modern natural rights, 76–80 Natural Right and History (Strauss), 313–24 natural right(s), 77, 79–81; Cicero on, 153; civil resistance as, 297, 298, 308n36; crisis of modern, 315; Hobbes on, 191; Hume and, 297, 298, 308n36; liberal constructions of, 77–81; liberalism and, 80–81; liberty of the individual as, 77; Mansfield and understanding of, 398; reason and, 80–81; Strauss on Burke and, 315, 318, 319, 323n22–23 nature: classical vs. liberal views of, 81; Hobbes and negative view of state of, 192, 193–97; as inspiration of fear, 77; liberalism and view of, 79, 81, 89; as per Bacon, 170–71; as purposive or teleological for Aristotle, 81–82; Rousseau’s natural man, 113; science and the unnatural in Bacon, 170 The New Atlantis (Bacon, Salomon’s House), 173–74, 175 Newell, W. R., 28 New Model Army, 248–49, 252, 253, 262n13, 263n27 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle): freedom or liberty as subject in, 85–86; friendship as subject in, 25, 40n19 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 8, 75, 76, 116 nihilism, 224, 400 nobility: in Aristotle, 45–46, 70n5, 87; of the gentleman, 16–17, 18; as the good in Aristotle, 58–59; liberal critique of virtue, 87–93. See also aristocracy normality: as enforced by power, 219–21, 223 Octavian, 162 Oeconomicus (Xenophon), 5, 10–17

“Of Glory” (Montaigne), 108–9 Old Regime (Tocqueville), 330, 334–35, 342, 354n34 oligarchy, 84, 381–82 On Duties (Cicero), 151, 157–59, 161 On the Laws (Cicero), 159 On the Orator (Cicero), 153–55 On the Republic (Cicero), 149, 152, 160–61 On War (Clausewitz), 201 oratory: Cicero on, 153–57; harangues, 262n20; Puritan politics, 251–52; Xenophon on Socrates, 6–7, 41n37 pantheism, 371–72 Paradise Lost (Milton), 184n41 Parmenides (Plato), 8–9 parties, political: Cromwell’s army as political party, 252–53; democracy as dependent upon, 378, 389; first principles and, 381, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388; great parties, 383; as institutions, 377; last party, 384, 385, 394n30; Mansfield on, 359, 394n30, 398; “parties of principle,” 383; party identification, 377–78 (see also partisanship); party politics as art of rule, vii; religion and, 359, 360–61, 366; role in democracy, 378; small parties, 383–84. See also partisanship partisanship: Aristotle on, 381–82; confidence in, 387–90; democracy and, 360, 371–72, 374, 377–80, 382, 389; disillusionment with party government, 385–87, 389–90; fugitive partisanship, 380–83; independents as “undercover partisans,” 389–90; Mansfield on, 378–79, 385, 394n30, 398–99; natural rights as apartisan, 79–80; negative perceptions of, 377–78, 380; as normative, 377, 378; opposition and, 388; party interests and regime instability, 382; party politics as art of rule, vii; progressive partisanship, 383–84; religion and,

Index 360, 366, 368, 371–72, 374, 398; as respectable, 368, 377–80, 383, 385–86, 388–90, 392, 398; Tocqueville on, 359–60; truth claims and, 385–86; value pluralism and, 390–91 passion: contagion of political sentiments, 251, 253, 263, 263n25; Descartes on, 233; Hume on moral sentiment, 291–92, 298, 301, 305n1, 306n9; Hume on volition and, 292; Montesquieu on political, 231, 236; self-restraint and, 58. See also enthusiasm; fear; love Passions of the Soul (Descartes), 233 St. Paul, 170 peace: Clausewitz and polarity of war and, 212–13, 215, 216; commerce and inclination toward, 237; Hobbes and potential for, 208–9; Hume on, 304; Machiavelli and, 208–9, 259–60; society and politics as infrastructure for, 343–44, 357n63, 385; Tocqueville on, 343–44, 357n63 Pensèes (Montesquieu), 129 perception: Aristotle on self-perception, 66–67, 74n44; glory as matter of, 108–9 Persian Letters (Montesquieu), 125, 126, 127, 130, 138, 144, 145n6 perspective: as per Tocqueville, 327–28, 334–38 Petrie, Eric S., ix; article by, 75–94 Phenomenology (Hegel), 18 philia, 31, 70n1. See also friendship A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Burke), 319 Plato: Cicero’s critique of, 154–55; on eros vs. thumos, 329; on writings as works of “beautiful and young” Socrates, 7–8; Xenophon contrasted with, 3–8 pleasure: friendship as, 25, 34–35, 48–49, 56, 59, 62; as process in Montesquieu, 130; in Xenophon, 14

437

Plutarch, 271 pluralism, 249–50, 314, 380, 386, 391–92 Pocock, J. G. A., 76, 197n7 polarity: principle of, 201–2, 211–16, 218, 219, 221–22, 223, 226 political imagination: Shakespeare and, 270, 273, 276, 277–78 political philosophy, vii, 313–24, 380–81 political science, 79–80, 350–51, 355n37, 360, 369, 378, 382–83, 391, 400–401; Hobbes on, 191; Montesquieu’s, 229–44; Tocqueville’s, 325–58 political violence: and foundation of Rome, 153 Politics (Aristotle), 81, 84–85, 353n16, 369 Powell, J. G. F., 152, 153 power: absolute, 210; Bacon on “Human Empire” and quest for, 175–76; Bacon on technology, 171–72; as burden on the powerful, 99–101; Clausewitz and zero-sum formulation of, 211–16; as cooperative, 331; democracy and public power, 368; and discipline, 217; executive power, 151, 235; Foucault on, 216–24; Hobbes’s formulation of power as zero-sum, 207–11; instability and fluidity of, 218; as isolating and incompatible with friendship, 104–5, 168; Machiavelli’s zero-sum formulation of, 203–6; Mansfield on virtue and, 88; Montesquieu’s distribution of, 235; as omnipresent in social relations, 216–17, 222–23, 225; and powerlessness, 206, 212; principle of polarity and, 201–2, 211–16, 218, 219, 221–22, 223, 226; as productive, 219–20; punishment as exercise of, 19, 151, 219, 248; relationship between sovereign and the governed as mutually beneficial transfer of, 210–11; resistance, 213,

438

Index

222–24; security as motive for pursuit of, 101; and slavery, 220–21; social relations as root of, 216–17; violence as distinct from, 218–19; war-model logic and understanding of, 217–19, 222, 223, 225; zero-sum formulation of power dynamics, 201–27 prescription: Burke and, 314–15 The Prince (Machiavelli, Mansfield trans.), xi, 149–50, 204, 247. See also Machiavelli, Niccolò principalities: vs. republics, 149–50, 168, 204–5 prisons: and imprisonment, 217–19, 221–22 privacy, 341 the private sphere, 75, 101, 118–19, 217, 352n10 progressivism, 380, 384, 387–90, 391 property rights, 78 prophecy and prophets: Bacon and false prophets, 178 providence: Bacon and science as, 169; Biblical references in Hamlet, 276; Tocqueville on democracy as providential, 368–69, 372, 374; in Xenophon, 20–21 prudence, 52, 71n20; Baconian concept of, 179; Burke and, 317, 323n23; conservatism and, 388; enthusiasm and erosion of, 290, 299; law as, 160; Machiavelli on, 188, 190 public opinion, 20, 250, 363, 364–67, 380–81, 391 the public sphere, 75, 118–19 Publius, 251, 399 punishment, 19, 151, 219, 248, 294 Puritans, 253, 264, 298, 299, 363, 364, 373. See also Cromwell, Oliver Putnam, Robert, 350, 357n65 Pyrrhus, King, 100–101, 105 Quint, David, 121n21 Quintus Curtius, 107 Quintus Ennius, 151

rational choice theory, 343, 356n55, 400 rationality: in Aristotle, 86 Rawls, John, 360, 390 Read, James, ix; article by, 201–27 real politique, 96, 120n5 reason: American democracy and, 240–41; Cicero’s Stoicism and, 159; friendship and dialectical reason, 37; Hobbes on illumination and, 191–92; and Hume’s moral sentiment, 291–92, 301, 306n9; law as human, 231; madness of Hamlet, 270, 277, 283; Montesquieu on, 231, 235–36, 237, 239; natural right and, 79–81; vs. perception, 115; Stoicism and, 160; and subordination of desire, 60–61, 72n28 The Reformation, 176, 249–50, 269–70, 273, 276–83, 284n3, 285n4 Reisert, Joseph, viii; article by, 23–41 religion: in America, 362; American democratic system and, 360, 362, 365–67; as authority, 232, 256, 273–74, 280, 282, 361–64, 362, 365, 366–67; Cromwell and religion as a political instrument, 249–53; fanaticism as threat to liberty, 304; feigned faith, 178, 184n38; Hume on enthusiasm or fanaticism, 247, 249–53, 257, 297, 304, 310n59; as limit to possible excess or tyranny, 362; Montesquieu on English liberalism and, 92; pantheism, 371–72; partisanship and, 360–61, 366, 368, 371–72, 374, 398; as a political institution, 361; political parties and, 360; Puritans, 253, 264, 297, 299, 363, 364, 373; Roman Catholic Church, 119n3, 297, 366, 371; separation of church and state in America, 361, 364–65, 366; Shakespeare’s allusions to, 270–71, 285; as source for civil law, 282, 363; superstition and, 297;

Index toleration or freedom of, 263n22, 366–67, 398. See also Christianity Republic (Plato), 167–68 republics: Cicero on Roman, 150–53; Cicero’s definition of, 150; citizenship in, 150; and the common good, 150; contrasted with principalities, 149–50, 204–5; and justice, 150, 162; liberty and, 162; Machiavelli on, 151–52, 204–6; as optimal form of government, 152; vs. principalities, 149–50, 168, 204–5 resistance, 213, 380; civil resistance, 308n36; energy and, 331; Hume on civil, 290, 297–99, 297–302, 308n36, 308n37; as refusal of selfknowledge in Foucault, 222–23 respectability, respectable partisanship, 368, 377–80, 383, 385–86, 388–90, 392, 398; as ethical notion, 379 revolutions: American Revolution, 239, 360, 367; civil associations reduced inclination to revolt, 357n63; Foucault and, 222; French revolution, 245; reform contrasted with, 278. See also The Reformation rhetoric. See oratory rights: equal individual rights as foundation of liberalism, 76–77, 83–87; Hobbes and equal individual rights, 77; property rights, 78. See also natural right(s) Roman Catholic Church: compatibility with democracy, 371; equality and, 371; Hume and, 297; Montaigne and, 119n3, 371; and partisan French politics, 366; Shakespeare on, 273–277, 279–281; Tocqueville on, 366, 371 Rome: Cicero on, 153, 159; constitution of, 153; Machiavelli on, 150–51, 153, 189, 190, 196, 197n8, 198n16, 205–6, 224 Romulus, 153 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: critiques of Montesquieu, 125–27, 129; gender

439

equity opposed by, 134; on Machiavelli’s The Prince, 247; as modern thinker, 125; on Montaigne, 122n23; on Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 126–27, 129; natural man as conceived by, 113; as poetic philosopher, 125; and “public opinion” as concept, 262n19; Strauss on, 315–16, 317, 321n9, 322n13–14, 322n17, 323n23 Rubin, Leslie, 31 rule: the arts of, vii–viii; commerce and indirect, 239–40; compulsion, 19; friendship as incompatible with, 30, 38, 102–3, 104–5; the good life and artful, viii; of the willing subject, 18–19, 28. See also specific regimes Sabl, Andrew, ix, 309n56; article by, 245–65 Sachs, Joe, 72n26 salvation, 170 Sappho, 136 Satan, (devil, princeps huius mundi); Baconian thought and, 178; Machiavelli as servant of, 170 Saxo Grammaticus, 269 Schaub, Diane J., ix; article by, 125–46 Schulman, Adam, viii; article by, 3–21 science: Bacon on, 169, 170, 174; Montesquieu and Cartesian approach to understanding politics, 232–34 Scipio, 150, 152, 153, 160 Second Letter (Plato), 7–8 Second Treatise (Locke), 78, 79, 94n13 security: desire to “live and be saved,” 53; enthusiasm as threat to, 92; Machiavelli on safety and the requirement of “alterations,” 189; as motive for pursuing power, 101; terrorism, 304 Sejanus, 168 the self: Aristotle on self-perception, 66–69, 74n44; as composite, 51–53, 54, 65, 67–68, 68–69, 116; friendship and creation of, 68–69;

440

Index

self-alienation, 122n32. See also selfgovernment; self-interest; selfknowledge self-government: apathy and unsuitability for, 136; Montesquieu on capability for, 136, 239; Tocqueville on energy and attention required for, 327–28, 330–31, 336, 338–42, 344, 347, 350–51, 352n11, 357n59 self-interest: friendship and, 26–32, 50–51, 58–59, 60–61; Hobbes on, 192; moderation and, 298; modern politics and, 383; Montaigne on, 96, 116, 117; Montaigne’s formulation of, 96; religious enthusiasm and disregard for, 298–99; self-love, 58–59, 336; Tocqueville on, 336, 343–44, 355n38. See also ambition self-knowledge: and creation or cultivation of the self, 115, 117; Foucault on resistance as refusal of, 222–23; friendship as self-discovery and, 68–69; Montaigne on, 123n38; Montaigne’s essaying of one’s self, 103, 113, 115, 116, 120n8, 122n23; moral reflexivity, 295–96, 306n9; observation or perception of the self, 66–67, 74n44, 115; Xenophon’s exploration of the “gentleman” and, viii, 3 self-love, 58–59, 72n28, 336 self-reliance, 96 self-restraint, 56, 58, 112, 325, 365–66, 381 Seneca, 96 Sensen, Kathryn, article by, viii–ix, 43–74 sexuality: Greek homoeroticism, 145n12; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 145n12; sexual passion in Montesquieu’s poetic philosophy, 126 Shakespeare, William: audience and authorial intentions of, 270–71; Hamlet, 269–287; Henry VIII, 271; Julius Caesar, 271, 281; Lady

Macbeth’s soliloquy, 326; Macbeth, 271, 326; political imagination of, 270, 273, 276, 277–78; use of sources by, 271–83. See also Hamlet (Shakespeare) Shklar, Judith, 88–89, 90 Short, Peter, 272 skepticism: of Burke regarding human motives, 386; Ciceronian, 153–56; Hume and, 309n59; liberalism in, 88, 91; Machiavelli and, 110, 153–56, 163 slavery: Aristotle and, 82–83, 85–87; Cromwell’s army and, 248; Hobbes and, 94n13; Hume and, 248, 292, 296–97; liberalism and condemnation of, 82–83, 94n13; Locke and, 94n13; Montesquieu’s condemnation of, 238; power dynamics of slave relationship, 220–21; Rawls on rejection of, 390; as result of “too much freedom,” 338, 355n45; Tocqueville and, 331, 338, 355n45; and U.S. Civil War, 216 Sleidanus, John, 286n13 Smith, Travis D., ix; article by, 167–84 social capital, 350. See also energy, Tocqueville’s conception of Socrates: as exemplar of philosopher, 23–39; happiness as explored by, 14–15; Montaigne on, 123n38; Plato’s depiction of, 7–8; rhetorical megalegoria, 6–7; trial and death of, 6–7, 24; Xenophon’s depiction of, 6–7, 11, 23–24, 35–36 soul: Bacon on the supernatural, 171; desire and unification of, 50–51; equation of the body and, 307n24; free will and, 307n23; friendship and kinship of, 48, 50–52, 62, 67–68, 102; Hegel’s “beautiful,” 18; Hume on illusory, 294–95, 296, 303; Montaigne and cultivation of the, 113–14, 117; Montesquieu and the “free soul,” 230, 232, 238, 239–40; as mystification of human

Index agency, 294–95; toughness or strength of (rome tes psyches), 7 Spenser, Edmund, 326 spheres of life, 75, 118–19, 217, 221 spiritedness (thumos), 325, 329, 353n15–16 Spirit of Liberalism (Mansfield), 400 The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 126, 229, 231, 233, 235, 237, 240, 241, 243n31 Star Wars (film), 182n19 state of nature: Hobbes on, 80, 192, 193–97, 208, 209, 210; Montesquieu’s “laws of nature,” 231 statesmanship: American founders and, 240–41; Bolingbroke and, 384; Cicero on honor and, 162–63; in Montesquieu, 234; Strauss on, 316–17, 322n20; Strauss on Burke as statesman, 313, 316–17; vs. politicians, 322n20 Statesmanship and Party Government (Mansfield), 378–79, 398 Stendahl (Henri-Marie Beye), 8 Stoicism, 149, 157–59, 164n26, 165n32, 242n14 Stoic Paradoxes (Cicero), 159 Strauss, Leo: on Burke and natural right, 323n22–23; on Locke, 323n29; on Machiavelli and fear as political instrument, 168; Mansfield and, 399; on politics and motivation, 37; on Rousseau, 317, 321n9, 322n13–14, 322n14, 322n17, 323n23; “theory” as term and, 324n30; on Xenophon, 23, 37 Suarez, Francisco, 317, 323n23 subjects: as agents of sovereign, 210–11 The Sublime and the Beautiful (Burke), 319 suffering, 164n26; Aristotle on, 53; Baconian thought on, 173 Sulla, 245 Sulpicius, 161 summum malum, 169, 195 superstition, 294–95, 297, 300, 308n44 sympathy, 79, 251, 263n25, 290, 291, 293; and contagion, 251, 263n25

441

talent: Montaigne on, 103 Taming the Prince (Mansfield), 399 Tatum, James, 23 technology: Bacon on empirical science and, ix, 171–72, 174–75 The Temple of Gnidus (Montesquieu): Amour in, 129, 131–32, 138, 143, 144–45; anxiety as personified in, 141; Apollo in, 137–38; author’s pose as “translator,” 127–28; The beautiful in, 128, 132, 133–34, 138–39, 142, 144; critical reception of, 126–27, 128; desire in, 130, 140–42; female protagonists in, 132, 134–35, 138–42; intended audience for, 128–29; modesty, 130–31, 133, 136, 140, 143, 144; morality in, 127; Rousseau on, 126–27, 129; varieties of love in, 135–37; Venus (Aphrodite) in, 129–33, 136–39, 142, 144; Vulcan in, 130–31 terrorism, 167, 216, 262n16, 304 the lion (in Machiavelli), ix, 110, 253 A Theory of Justice (Rawls), 390 Theseus, 133 Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents (Burke), 368, 379 Thucydides, 194, 198n20 thumos (spiritedness), 325, 329, 353n15–16 Tigranes, 29–30 Tocqueville, Alexis de: on ambition, 340, 342–43, 356n51; aristocracy and, 329, 331, 335, 354n35, 362, 368–74; and Aristotelian politics, 368; on attention and engagement of citizens, 327–28, 333, 336, 338–51, 351n11, 355n46, 356n47, 357n56, 358n69, 359n59; authorial intent of, 328; on Christianity, 360, 363, 366, 368, 371–72, 374; on courage, 325, 329, 337; on democracy’s vulnerability to despotism, 331–32, 345, 349–50, 371; on desire, 329, 341, 343; energy (see energy, Tocqueville’s

442

Index

conception of); equality, 328, 341, 369–70; faith of, 374n4; on France, 328, 344–46, 347, 354n35; on judgment, 334, 335, 346, 372–73; Mansfield and importance of, 399–400; materialism in, 328, 340–42, 348, 356n50, 365; moderation and democracy in, 337–38; on peace, 343–44, 357n63; on perspective, 327–28, 334–38; on political parties and partisanship, 359–60; on providential nature of democracy, 368–69, 372, 374; on Roman Catholicism, 366, 371; on self-government, 327–28, 330–31, 336, 338–42, 344, 347, 350–51, 352n11, 357n59; on self-interest, 336, 343–44, 355n38; on slavery, 331, 338, 355n45; on townships, 330, 340, 342–45, 347–48, 357n56, 373; on will, 331, 369; on women and democracy, 325–26, 337 tolerance or toleration, 90, 101–2, 263n22, 333, 346, 367, 385, 389–90 Tory party, 389 totalitarianism, 252, 253, 354n29. See also despotism; dictatorship; tyranny townships, 330, 340, 342–45, 347–48, 357n56, 373 tranquility: Montaigne on, 99–102, 110, 114, 117 A Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), 289, 290, 291, 305n2, 308n37, 309n59 truth: Cartesian thought and, 232–33; Cicero and Stoic conception of, 149, 159, 161; “effectual truth” as per Machiavelli, 149, 153, 158, 365; Foucault truth and power, 217, 222–23; modern politics and first principles, 386, 387–88, 390; Montaigne and subjective, 115; partisanship and claims of, 385–86 Truth and Power (Foucault), 201 Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), 156–57, 161

tyranny: Cromwell and dictatorship, 245; the gentleman as distinct from the tyrant, 10–11, 13; household management as sort of, 10–11; individualism and, 181n6; as isolating and incompatible with friendship, 104–5, 168; as miserable for the tyrant, 167; modernity and ethical tyranny, 256; or oppression as evil, 169; Socrates’s construction of, 167. See also despotism United States of America: American Revolution, 239, 360, 367; Civil War, 216; founders of nation, 235–36, 241; separation of church and state in, 361, 364–65, 366 utopias: Montaigne’s utopian visions, 96, 113, 129–30; Montesquieu’s hedonistic paradise, 130 value pluralism, 390–91 vampirism, 175, 183n26 vanity, 100, 110, 132, 136, 236, 238 Venus (Aphrodite): in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 129–33, 136–39, 142, 144 virtue: Aristotle’s construction of moral, 72n24–25, 83–84, 303; as avoidance of ordinary vices, 89, 90; choice as, 83–84; courage as classical, 72n24; Descartes on, 233; friendship and, 60–61, 85–86; happiness and, 400; in Hume, 291; as indication of individual excellence, 86; liberal critique of, 87–93; Mansfield on, 88, 400–401; moderation and, 54, 71n23; modern politics, 383; Montaigne on, 116, 117; Montesquieu on political, 236; as primary political passion, 231; as toughness of the soul (rome tes psyches), 7; violence and fraud as virtues, 191; wisdom as, 36, 335; in Xenophon, 23–24, 34–37 Voyage to Paphos (Montesquieu), 126

Index Vulcan, 130–31, 142, 145n8; in Montesquieu’s Temple of Gnidus, 130–31 war: advantage and tactical decisions during, 212–13; civil war, 209, 247; Clausewitz, 201, 202, 211–16, 218; decision to engage in, 215–16; escalation and neglect of shared interests, 214–15; Foucault on, 201, 202–3, 216–25; in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, 223; Hume on mercenary armies, 247–49; limited vs. unlimited, 212–13; militias, 249; as noble art, 12, 24, 27; polarity, principle of, 201–2, 211–16, 218, 219, 221–22, 223, 226; as politics, 196, 202–3, 216 Washington, George, 380 wealth: friendship as possession or, 32–33; Locke and accumulation of wealth as wasteful and disruptive, 78; Locke and transformation of natural materials into, 78; Socrates on friendship and, 11; Xenophon on, 12–13 Whelan, Frederick, 261n6 Whig party, 309n54, 384, 389 Whitehead, Alfred North, 7 will: Clausewitz on power and compulsion, 218; free will, 294–95, 303, 307n23; Hume on, 292,

443

294–95, 296, 303, 307n18; law as the general will, 235, 367; Montaigne on, 116, 123n33; passion and, 233, 292; rule and the willing subject, 18–19, 28; Tocqueville on divine, 369; Tocqueville on volition, 331; Wilson, John Dover, 270, 284n3, 286n16; Winthrop, Delba, xi, 399–400 wisdom, 51, 69; eloquence as, 154–55; practical (phronesis), 52, 84, 316, 318, 335–36, 381; virtue, 36, 335 Wittenberg, 270, 274 Xenophon: association with Socrates, 3–4; contrasted with Plato, 3–8; Cyrus and, 4–5; Cyrus as depicted by, 23–39; on divination as abdication of human responsibility, 23–24; on friendship, 23–39; happiness in, 12–14, 17, 20–21, 32, 37; kingship as defined by, 28; moderation in, 23–24, 37; Plato contrasted with, 3–8; on pleasure, 14; on providence, 20–21; Socrates as depicted by, 3, 6–7, 11, 23–39; on Socrates’s oratory, 6–7, 41n37; on wealth, 12–13 zero-sum theme, 201–27 Zwinglius, Ulric (Huldrych), 277, 280

About the Contributors

Ben Berger is assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College. He received his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 2001 and his A.B. in politics from Princeton University. He studied with Harvey C. Mansfield as a graduate student, and has recently completed a book manuscript on the ways in which political philosophy can inform the vast “civic engagement” literature in political science. He has also written on Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt. Mark Blitz (A.B and Ph.D. from Harvard University) is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he also has served as Chairman of the Department of Government and Director of Research. He is the author of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” and the Possibility of Political Philosophy and Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life and coeditor (with William Kristol) of Educating the Prince. Janet Dougherty has been a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 1982. She holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, where Harvey C. Mansfield was her dissertation adviser. Ioannis D. Evrigenis is assistant professor of political science and Bernstein Faculty Fellow at Tufts University. He undertook his graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Harvard University, where his dissertation was awarded the Herrnstein Prize. He is coeditor of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings and the author of Fear of Enemies and Collective Action. 445

446

About the Contributors

David S. Fott is associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is author of John Dewey: America’s Philosopher of Democracy and articles on Montesquieu, Cicero, Austen, and other subjects in Political Theory and other journals. He received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Harvey C. Mansfield advised his dissertation. Bryan Garsten is associate professor of political acience at Yale University, where he teaches political philosophy. He is the author of Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment, winner of the 2008 Delba Winthrop award for excellence in political science, and is currently writing on the theme of representative government’s relationship to religion. He studied with Harvey C. Mansfield as an undergraduate and graduate student at Harvard. Sharon R. Krause is associate professor of political science at Brown University. She is the author of Liberalism with Honor and Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. She discovered Harvey C. Mansfield by accident while completing a master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School, and later studied with him as a doctoral student in the government department at Harvard. Steven J. Lenzner is the Henry Salvatori Research Fellow in political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard in political science. Alan M. Levine is associate professor in the Department of Government, School of Public Affairs, at American University, Washington, D.C. He is author of Sensual Philosophy: Toleration, Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self, editor of Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration, and has published articles and book chapters on Montaigne, Nietzsche, Chinua Achebe, and European views of America He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he studied with Harvey C. Mansfield. Mary Ann McGrail is author of Tyranny in Shakespeare and editor of Shakespeare’s Plutarch. She holds a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in English, and a J.D. and M.A. in American legal history from the University of Virginia. She studied with and served as a teaching assistant to Harvey C. Mansfield. She practices law in Washington, D.C. Russ Muirhead teaches political theory at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to Texas, Muirhead was on the faculty in the Harvard Government Department. There he co-taught Ancient Political Thought with Harvey C.

About the Contributors

447

Mansfield, whose riveting and unforgettable lectures were an education in themselves. Muirhead is the author of Just Work and is currently at work on a book called A Defense of Party Spirit. Eric Petrie is associate professor at James Madison College, Michigan State University, where he teaches political philosophy, literature, and constitutional law. He studied with Harvey C. Mansfield while completing a dissertation on Aristotle and liberalism at Harvard University’s Department of Government. His dissertation won the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize at Harvard in 1991. James H. Read is professor of political science at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota and has been visiting professor at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government in 1988. He is the author of Power versus Liberty: Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and Jefferson, Doorstep Democracy: Face to Face Politics in the Heartland, and Majority Rule versus Consensus: The Political Thought of John C. Calhoun. He is currently working on a book on the concept of power. Joseph Reisert is author of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Friend of Virtue and is the Harriet S. and George C. Wiswell, Jr. Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He received an A.B. degree in politics from Princeton and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, where he studied with and worked as a teaching assistant for Harvey C. Mansfield. Andrew Sabl is associate professor of public policy and political science at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1997, writing his dissertation under Harvey C. Mansfield but against his good advice. He is the author of Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics and many scholarly articles. He is currently working on a book for Princeton on the political theory of Hume’s History of England. Diana J. Schaub is professor of political science at Loyola College in Maryland. Although never officially enrolled in a Mansfield course, she claims honorary student status. Harvey C. Mansfield served as the outside examiner for her honors thesis at Kenyon College. After completing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard. She is the author of Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters,” along with a number of book chapters and articles in the fields of political philosophy and American political thought.

448

About the Contributors

Kathryn Sensen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Government Department at Harvard University. Her dissertation is on the role of nature as a standard in Aristotle’s political philosophy. She has been both an undergraduate and graduate student of Harvey C. Mansfield. She teaches at Tulane University. Adam Schulman has been a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, since 1989. He also serves as senior research consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics and was coeditor of the Council’s volume, Human Dignity and Bioethics. He holds a doctorate in the history of science from Harvard, where he studied with and taught for Harvey C. Mansfield. Travis D. Smith is assistant professor of political science at Concordia University in Montreal. A graduate student of Harvey C. Mansfield’s, his dissertation was awarded the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize at Harvard in 2005.