One of the advantages of reading ancient texts is that they expose us to an unfamiliar world with an unfamiliar way of thinking. But for us to appreciate this we sometimes need to look behind some of the archaic or strange phrases we encounter to help the story make sense. After we get a sense of the story’s meaning, we can then consider its application for us today.
At a few different points in the story the narrator compares Jason’s attractiveness to the star Sirius. This star appeared close to the sun betweeen July 3-August 11, the so called “dog days” of summer. The Sirius star is the brightest sun in the constellation Canis Major (hence the term “dog days”). Some surmise that the ancients believed that the closeness of this bright star added to the heat of the sun, intensifying all things about what summer brings.
We can perhaps easily understand why human beauty would be linked with that of a star. The brightness of Sirius stands out above all other stars in the sky, just as when we notice that special someone across the room, all others fade from view. But in comparing Jason to Sirius in particular, Apollonius gave a foreshadowing hint that his audience in AD 300 would have understood immediately in a way we do not.
The ancient Greeks valued temperance and finding a mean between extremes. Cold and heat both bring good things, but the extremes of both are destructive. Excessive heat brings destruction to crops and to the soul. We know that on hot days, for example, crime increases. Our tendency towards anger and lethargy increases with extreme heat.
Romantic feelings are also associated with heat, but it is Spring, not Summer, that we associate with romance. Summer brings excess, and this foreshadows the destructive relationship Jason will end up having with Medea. The brightness of Sirius is a foreboding brightness. Too much light can harm just as much, or perhaps even more, as too much darkness.
But there is a flip side to the dog associations Apollonius foists upon Jason, and this subtlety helps makes The Argonautica literature worthy of our attention
Dogs had a dual place in ancient and traditional socieities (something we have touched on regarding Roland in this post). To recap briefly, dogs are, on the one hand,
Linked with false prophets and unrestrained appetite
but on the other,
Associated with obedience, humility and protection.
As noted previously, Jason does not exercise typical heroic leadership. He is not an unstoppable warrior like Achilles. He does not lead from the front like Roland, or possess the single-minded brilliance of Captain Nemo. Jason does show great concern for his men. He is a guardian, of sorts, for his crew, and this fits with how dogs were viewed in the Roman empire. We see here two Lares on a coin, and you can see the dog form:
Here is a later image, where they take a more distinctly human form:
So this connects positively to Jason’s leadership, and Apollonius includes this imagery to let you know of Jason’s strengths.
But dogs in the ancient world were never quite fully domestic creatures as we are used to today. They guarded borders, but would not have been brought inside the home. But Jason is the son of a king, and he should be king himself, were it not for his usurping uncle. Throughout the story, however, Jason rarely seems comfortable as a leader. He hangs back, he worries, he has insecurities. Initially his crew thought Hercules should lead. In one instance, he decides to leave an island at night because of a fair wind, but everyone knows that we have bad associations with night because of the confusion it can bring. Sure enough, Jason ends up leaving Hercules behind by mistake, and turning a ship around in the ancient world to row against the wind is basically impossible. In another instance, friendly hosts mistake Jason and his crew for invaders (again, this happens at night), and Jason accidentally kills the host king. When it comes time to box the brutish Amycus to allow them to leave his island peacefully, it is not Jason that steps forward, but another crew member.
Those who know the full story of Jason (which we will discuss at the conclusion of the Argonautica) understand that Jason will continually feel trapped and pressed by circumstances, and not able to transcend them. He never attains the greatness associated with other Greek heroes.
All this is wrapped up in Apollonius’ references to him as Sirius, the dog star, which many in the ancient world feared to see.
This week we looked at a debate about immigration to highlight a crucial skill Aristotle wishes to teach us, a skill democracies are prone to lack. As we saw last week, advocates of different political ideologies or platforms tend to absolutize the values their position highlights, while forgetting that their position inevitably fails to cover every conceivable value. We are finite creatures, and our values are finite, in the sense that every gain/advance will come at a cost. We have to leave something behind.
This is experientially true. If you want to get married and have a family, you have to sacrifice the fun of dating and meeting other people. If you have children, you have to leave behind the life of doing what you like and disposable income. You can certainly argue that married life with a family is a better choice than a life of perpetual dating. But worst of all would be the person who tried to have both at once. The married person who also wanted to date other people would wreak a great deal of havoc. The perpetual dater might simply provoke raised eyebrows.
Theologically this rings true as well, i.e., “Except a seed fall to the ground and die, it remains only a single seed; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). If we are to have life, either spiritually or physically, we must have death, whether that be physical death (the food we eat) or the death of a way of life (giving up a life of dating for marriage).
When faced with a controversial and thorny political issue such as immigration, I wanted the students to use Aristotle’s template to do the following:
See the strengths of each side of the argument
Understand the costs/what you have to sacrifice to achieve your aim
Discern that the debate was not about good values vs. bad values, but involved deciding which kinds of values to prioritize over other values.
The debate we viewed can be seen here:
Both speakers made good arguments, but I wanted the students to see the key underlying assumptions each side brought to the debate. How we view those key assumptions will likely determine what side we favor.
Not everyone loves argument by analogies, but I think analogies have a lot of power to distill key principles of an argument.
The “Pro” side of the debate (Prof. Kaplan) argues that people should be able to travel freely to seek out the best life for themselves they possibly can. He uses the analogy of a house and guest in the following manner:
Kaplan declares that he is not arguing that whomever wishes should be able to come to his house if he does not want them in his house.
If he wants someone to come in his house, and that someone wants to come, he should be allowed to come to Kaplan’s house. True, his neighbor might disapprove, but what business is it of theirs anyway?
He asserts that the “Con” side of the debate essentially argues that people should not have the freedom to extend invitations to people to come over to their house, and that those invited should not have the freedom to accept. This is absurd.
The “Con” side of the debate (Prof. Wellman) also uses the illustration of a house, but with a different emphasis from Kaplan:
He asks us to imagine that he leaves his house and goes to a conference for a week. When he returns, he asks his wife what she did while he was gone. She replied that she played cards with friends, got her hair done, and volunteered. Wellman implies that it would be absurd for him to object to such activities.
But, his wife then adds, I also decided to adopt a child from a foreign country. Here he is–meet your new son! Wellman declares that he would have every right to object to this action. His wife’s “freedom of association” has dramatically impacted his own freedom of association without his consent.
There are some deeper foundations to the arguments from both sides.
Kaplan, a libertarian, seems to believe in two key principles. The first is that the individual is the primary unit of society, and so our laws should be oriented around maximizing individual freedom. Secondly, libertarians tend to believe that maximizing economic freedom (which includes the free movement of labor) is a primary way to boost freedom overall. Economic growth is a moral issue, for greater economic growth means a better life for more people, especially those on the border between the lower and middle classes. So, in his analogy of the house, the homeowner is an employer and the guest is a potential worker.
I am not sure of the philosophical background of Wellman, but he argues that the group (though perhaps not necessarily the family, a la Aristotle) is the primary political decision making unit. Decisions that involve altering the makeup of a household/political community should be made by the community as a whole (or their representatives). In his “house” analogy he envisions a family rather than an employer.
Both analogies are persuasive, and both have their limits. Kaplan’s analogy doesn’t work as well when the guest wants to blast heavy metal music out of his window, which would obviously adversely affect the community. Wellman’s analogy makes perfect sense when comparing adoption to citizenship. But what if his wife just invited a friend over for coffee (maybe similar to a temporary work visa)? Hypothetically Wellman might still object to associating with his wife’s friend, but in that case our sympathies go to his wife. We would expect Wellman to bear up with the “incovenience” of the temporary association.
Deciding between these two positions boils down to the key divide between seeing the group/family or the individual as the primary political unit of society. Kaplan is suspicious of governments exercising authority over the individual, and Wellman much less so.
Hopefully, the students will see how their beliefs about these key “fork in the road” questions influence their position on immigration, whatever that might be.
We tend to think of “Justice” almost exclusively in terms of the proper punishment of bad behavior. If someone robs a bank, we say that justice is done if he is caught and sent to prison. If someone is wrongfully accused, we declare that justice is done when the judge dismisses the case.
The ancient world, however, had a broader conception of the word “justice,” using it to describe all things being rightly ordered in one’s life and in the life of the body politic. A rightly ordered world might involve things that are directly moral, or sinful. So, for example, having one’s bed could be a portion of having a “just” house, but not making the bed would not necessarily be a sin. It would however, be a defect.
We see this use of justice in Old Testament frequently, such as in Psalm 54, which reads, “O God save me in thy name, and judge me in thy strength.” Here the psalmist is not asking God to punish him for his sins–far from it. Rather, God’s judgment and His salvation are one in the same. The psalmist is asking God to rightly order his being, to put him back together again appropriately, which would involve much more than overt sin.
Aristotle noted long ago that different forms of government have different forms of justice which both make sense and are incomplete all at once. He writes,
What are the oligarchic and democratic ideas of justice? Both sides have part of justice on their side, and both sides fail to express justice in its fullness.
In democracies justice means equality, especially in the distribution of political power. That is, political power should be put in the hands of as wide a range of people as possible. A poor man, for example, holding power with no experience or education, is considered a triumph. This creates, in their view, a stable state where everyone feels included, and this is “justice.”
In oligarchies, inequality in the distribution of power is considered just. If people are not equal in wisdom, education, wealth, and the like, they should not have an equal share of political power. This helps the state have rulers that are best able to govern. In turn, a well governed, stable state will be “just.”
The advocates of democracy and oligarchy both make erroneous judgments. Democrats hold that if men are equal in basic humanity, they should be equal in the distribution of power and property. Oligarchs hold that if men are not equal in talent, wisdom, and skill they should not be equal in most anything else.
True justice means that those who have contributed to the proper end [it’s reason for being] of the state, should have rights, property, and power in proportion to that contribution. For that reason, all must pay attention to the “goal” of the state in which one lives.
Aristotl’e ideas might seem confusing, but if we break the concepts down into something smaller and more in line with our experience, it might make more sense.
Imagine a family has three sons, Bob (18), Joe (12), and Sam (6). One evening the mom discovers that the she has three Oreo cookies left in the pantry. What would be just, and most likely to lead to a harmonious order within the family. Most would probably suggest that here the focus should be on pure equality, i.e., each son gets one cookie each.
But imagine now that the mom has three different sized pieces of steak, small, medium, and large. Most would likely not argue that justice requires them to cut up all the steaks and give each the same amount. Here most would lean towards something along the lines of the oldest getting the biggest steak, the youngest the smallest, and so on. To be sure, this is still “equality,” but it manifests itself differently here. If the family also had a 6 month old son, no one would suggest that justice demands he should get steak, as his stomach could not even digest it properly.
Parents usually treat their children differently when it comes to bedtimes, to the great annoyance of the younger siblings. Most, however, intuit that it would not be just to have all three go to bed at the same time. Here the context differs, and the meaning of justice would differ as well.
Ideally a state will have a degree of flexibility around their concept of justice, allowing for context to have its say. But as Aristotle suggests, what direction a society leans toward will depend on what that society values as its purpose or goal. For example, if you live in a society that believes that age should be respected above all else, you would defer decisions to the elderly, and you would give them the best seat at the table, and so forth. This is not equality, but it is justice according to one’s guiding principles.
An example more close to home comes from Elaine Calabro’s article in The Atlantic about Canada’s practice of MAiD, or “Medical Assistance in Dying.” The practice has grown from allowing euthanasia only in cases of advanced terminal illness, to those who simply want to avoid suffering. Calabro writes, “At the center of the world’s fastest growing euthanasia regime is the concept of patient autonomy. Honoring a patient’s wishes is of course a core value in medicine. But here it has become paramount.” Some physicians express moral or practical objections, but most who work in the industry find their work meaningful. As one physician noted regarding his work in assisted suicides, “We’re so happy [the patient] got what they wanted.” Given the basic values that created the practice, its expansion was “inevitable” according to the author.
Here we can note that a core value, i.e, people fulfill their purpose by achieving their desires, which drives much of economy, politics, etc. has simply morphed into the medical and ethical field. Hence, “Justice” in this case means giving people their autonomy, their say, in the most important life decisions. One can easily see how various other democratic practices and ideals come from this same source. This shows how one particular view of justice works in some areas (we should pick our political leaders, and pick what we want for desert)* might not work in other areas of life. We have already seen how parents use different views of justice depending on context in family life, and this is a good argument for its application to political life.
But which form of justice should be used when, and why? This is at the core of many of our current political disagreements. Aristotle also hints at the fact that these “justices” must somehow be connected to Justice in some final sense. Without agreement on Justice, we will struggles with our mini justices.
Dave
*I have a variety of friends who have traveled in Europe, and especially as one moves south and east (Italy, Greece, etc.) they notice that when going to a restaurant, often the proprietor will size you up and tell you what you will have. If you object and point to the menu, saying, “I was hoping for some lamb instead of the pork,” you will simply be told that “There is no lamb, only pork.” Eventually you agree to “submit” or leave the restaurant.This shows a different culture around food, but also a different culture around authority, tradition, the individual, and so on.
This week we continued our look at Machiavelli, and paired up chapter 8 of The Prince with the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Nixon is best known for the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation during his second term in 1974. This is a fair verdict of history. However, we do well to remember that Nixon had a variety of foreign policy successes during his tenure, such as
Initiating a policy of detente, and the SALT treaties signed with the Soviet Union which contributed to easing the nuclear arms race.
Assisting in peace negotiations between Israeal and other Arab nations duirng the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
His historic overture to China and our opening of diplomatic relations. While we may wonder today at the ultimate legacy of our shift in China policy over the last 50 years, at the time it was a revolutionary move that likely helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
Domestically, Nixon had several initiatives that may surprise some who know him only through the prism of Watergate:
He started several new government agencies, such as the EPA, OSHA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
He took the US economy off of the gold standard
He reshaped financial policy by creating the Office of Management and Budget*
He passed the Clean Water Act
Some of these policies were popular, some not, but we cannot question that for a time he was an effective political leader and easily won reelection in 1972. But the Watergate scandal, and Nixon’s actions during the scandal, unraveled everything very quickly, and we should consider why this was the case. For that, we turned to Machiavelli’s insights about rulers who exercise “villainy.”
Machiavelli begins chapter eight of The Prince discussing two infamous rulers, and begins with Agathocles of Sicily, writing,
The son of a potter, he led a life of the utmost wickedness through all the stages of his fortune. Nevertheless, his wickedness was accompanied by such vigor of mind and body, that having joined the miltia, he rose through its grades to become praetor of Syracuse. . . . He [then] called together the people and Senate of the city, having imparted his design to fight Hamilcar the Carthaginian, . . . at a given signal had the senators and all the rich men of the city murdered, [eliminating all who could oppose him]. . . . And although he was twice beaten by Carthage and ultimately beseiged, he was able not only to defend the city, . . . but also [expand its territory into Africa] and [eventually] brought the Carthiginians to terms. In the end, he maintained his position as prince by many courageous and perilous expedients.
It cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be without faith or pity, and without religion, by which methods one may indeed gain an empire but not glory.
Machiavelli goes on to cite the example of someone contemporary to his own day, who used many of the same methods as Agathocles. Later in the chapter, he continues,
Some may wonder how it came about that Agathocles, and others like him, could, after infinite treachery and crueltry, live secure for many years in their country without being conspired against by their subjects; although many others have, through their cruelty, been unable to maintain their position in times of peace, to say nothing of the uncertain times of war.
Machiavelli then answers his query, writing,
I believe this arises from the cruelties being used well or badly. “Well” used may be called those (if it is permissable to use the word of evil) which are committed once for the need of securing oneself, and which afterwards are not persisted in, but which are exchanged for methods as useful to the citizens as possible. Cruelties ill used are those which , although at first few, increase rather than diminish with time. Those who follow the former method may remedy in some measure their condition with God and man, as did Agathocles. As to the others, it is impossible for them to maintain themselves. . . . a conqueror must arrange to have all his cruelties come at once, so as not to have to resort to them every day . . .
We can first note that almost no political leader follows his advice, and indeed, in a democratic system, following his advice (supposing that one should do so, a different question entirely) becomes almost impossible. To get elected, one must promise good things, and certainly not state that one will begin their term by doing various evil deeds. To get elected, one must at least give the appearance of either a) healing the harms done by the previous leader, or b) prevent the harms that the challenger will introduce should they be elected.
The elected leader usually then enjoys a honeymoon period, an era of good feelings, where people assume the best and enjoy the change. Then, later, when the leader makes missteps, they are judged harshly for them. Among other things, these missteps go against the grain of their earlier cultivated image.
For presidents that serve two terms, the second term usually brings crisis and controversy. Truman’s second term had the Korean War, Johnson’s second term had violence in cities and the escalation in Vietnam. Nixon had Watergate, and Reagan the Iran-Contra scandal. Clinton had the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment. Bush had to face increasing difficulties and costs in Iraq, as well as the financial crash of ’08. The good feelings engendered by Obama in his first term disappeared during his second. There appears little escape from this pattern.
Perhaps one problem modern political leaders have is that they have little chance to exercise physical courage in any direct way. This limits their chances to win the favor of the people and renew their mandate, so to speak. Agathocles, for example, didn’t just take political risks that paid off, he regularly risked his own life.
Crtics of Machiavelli assert that he encouraged rulers to do evil things, or at least, gave them a pathway for doing so. This is possible, but I think we have to think more deeply about his words. Machiavelli does not say one can be a great ruler by doing evil, but q successful one. There is a difference. If one regards politics as an inevitably dirty business, then one needs to be aware of how to use the dirt. The divide, I think comes between those who think the dirt cannot be avoided, and those who think that it can. Machiavelli would tell us that the problem with modern leadership is not the dirt on their hands, but that they tell us that their hands are clean.
Dave
*I would suggest that the “throughline” for understanding both his foreign policy successes, his domestic policy initiatives, and the Watergate scandal is that of control. Nixon was not process oriented but idea oriented. He was suspicious of collaboration and had a hard time trusting others. He believed he was the one who best control events and outcomes. So, taking the economy off the gold standard gave the Fed more control over the economy, his budget reorganization put more power into the executive branch, and perhaps he created other federal agencies to extend executive power even in areas traditionally not managed by government. As for Watergate, rather than come clean at first and accept minor damage, he believed he could control the messaging and prevent problematic fallout. His miscalculation on this (in addition to his actual obstruction of justice) led to his demise.
This week we continued our look at the Vietnam war. The fall of South Vietnam has many causes, but given our limited time with this period, we need to try and find the “core” of why our policies and military intervention failed to prevent North Vietnam from absorbing South Vietnam.
Machiavelli’s speciality involves viewing different events through a few key principles, one of them involving how states get created and how people come to rule them.
He writes,
Those who solely by good fortune become princes from being private citizens have little trouble in rising, but much in keeping atop; they have not any difficulties on the way up, because they fly, but they have many when they reach the summit. Such are those to whom some state is given either for money or by the favour of him who bestows it; as happened to many in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the Hellespont, where princes were made by Darius, in order that they might hold the cities both for his security and his glory; as also were those emperors who, by the corruption of the soldiers, from being citizens came to empire. Such stand simply upon the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated them — two most inconstant and unstable things. Neither have they the knowledge requisite for the position; because, unless they are men of great worth and ability, it is not reasonable to expect that they should know how to command, having always lived in a private condition; besides, they cannot hold it because they have not forces which they can keep friendly and faithful.
States that rise unexpectedly, then, like all other things in nature which are born and grow rapidly, cannot have their foundations and relations with other states fixed in such a way that the first storm will not overthrow them; unless, as is said, those who unexpectedly become princes are men of so much ability that they know they have to be prepared at once to hold that which fortune has thrown into their laps, and that those foundations, which others have laid before they became princes, they must lay afterwards.
Machiavelli goes on to cite examples of men who gain power through nepotism, such as Cesare Borgia, who demonstrated enormous energy and creative drive. Borgia had the respect of some, and the fear of most. He had many successes. And yet, as Machiavelli notes, even a man of such ability as Borgia had his power eroded almost the moment his father died. If Cesare Borgia failed, we can count on almost everyone failing in some way in such a position.
We will understand Machiavelli better if we understand his terminology, especially the word “Fortune.” For example, a person might get into Harvard not because of their achievements but because of a large contribution from their parents. A king might place his favorite in charge of a conquered province, regardless of his connection to the people there or his experience. All this would be an example of Fortune at work.
Very few places in Machiavelli’s day made political decisions via elections, so his advice may seem outdated. But if by “princes” we take “rulers” more generally that will help us understand his words more clearly.
When looking at South Vietnam, we should first realize that in many ways, the state was created by “Fortune” artificially. True, the Vietnamese people had existed for centuries, and Vietnam as a region had existed for centuries. But after the French lost control of what was then called Indochina in 1954, Vietnam was partitioned into North and South Vietnam by treaty. The US had a heavy hand in making sure this happened, and we had good reasons for doing so. We wanted to stop the spread of communism, for one (the North was basically communist controlled) and we wanted to preserve the long southern coastline for shipping, trade, and other security reasons. But South Vietnam was essentially created by “Fortune” and its president, Ngo Diem, was in power at least partly due to our influence.
Machiavelli would have said that the fall of South Vietnam 1975 had a lot to do with the circumstances of its founding in 1954. It would have taken extraordinary leadership to overcome the inherent problems involved in its somewhat artificial creation. Unfortunately, President Diem displayed some of the worst characteristics of leaders created by Fortune.
To be fair to Diem, he was an intelligent man and a staunch anti-communist. He likely also held sincere Christian beliefs. He had a real desire to see South Vietnam succeed. He showed courage in the war for independence from the French, for in eschewing both communism and colonialism, he made himself vulnerable to reprisals from both parties. He wanted a democratic Vietnam, and had well thought out ideas of how to map democracy onto Vietnamese culture and history.
Having said this, many leaders created by Fortune can forget that they did not truly earn their position. This can lead them to overconfidence, which in turn leads them to isolate themselves from the populace.* Diem made several missteps, among them
He was a Catholic in a largely Buddhist part of Vietnam. Historians debate the nature of his treatment of Buddhists as democratic equals, but his policies towards them failed to connect. Eventually, he ended up cracking down on the civil liberties of Buddhists.
He held elections, but almost certainly rigged them in his favor, or at least, significantly exaggerated the extent of his winning margins.
He practiced nepotism, giving family members key governmental posts. If these family members had great ability, this could have mitigated the political cost of nepotism. As it was, his family members were corrupt and unstable. One of his brothers, for example, was a professed admirer of Hitler.
When the US finally decided to withdraw its support of Diem in 1963, a successful coup attempt happened almost immediately. But one coup can lead to another, and South Vietnam never again had a stable government. After hearing about the coup Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, reportedly stated that, “I can hardly believe the Americans would be so stupid.” The North Vietnamese government wrote that,
The consequences of the 1 November coup d’état will be contrary to the calculations of the US imperialists … Diệm was one of the strongest individuals resisting the people and Communism. Everything that could be done in an attempt to crush the revolution was carried out by Diệm. Diệm was one of the most competent lackeys of the US imperialists. Among the anti-Communists in South Vietnam or exiled in other countries, no one has sufficient political assets and abilities to cause others to obey. Therefore, the lackey administration cannot be stabilized. The coup d’état on 1 November 1963 will not be the last.
Indeed, this unfortunately proved prescient. South Vietnam experienced many other changes in leadership over the next several years, and no regime ever had anything like stability. In such an environment, American military efforts were akin to pouring water into a sieve. South Vietnam crumbled as the US inevitably withdrew its support, and US culture crumbled as well, with the domestic and foreign scene mirroring each other in some ways.
Dave
*The story of South Vietnam partially foreshadows what happened in Afghanistan in 2001-2020. Our invasion helped install Hamid Karzai in power, and he began his term in office with significant international acclaim and support. Based on my very limited knowledge it seems to me he was a better leader than Diem, and smarter about how he tried to unite different factions. Karzai was intelligent and courageous. In time, however, his relationship with the U.S. soured, and he was accused of corruption from different facets of the Afghan and international community. Afghanistan could not maintain the momentum of the early 2000’s, and in time the Taliban returned. This quasi-democratic interregnum lasted about 20 years, roughly the same amount of time South Vietnam existed.
Constitutions are preserved when their destroyers are at a distance, and sometimes also because they are near, for the fear of them makes the government keep in hand the constitution.
Wherefore the ruler who has a care of the constitution should invent terrors, and bring distant dangers near, in order that the citizens may be on their guard, and, like sentinels in a night watch, never relax their attention. He should endeavor too by help of the laws to control the contentions and quarrels of the notables, and to prevent those who have not hitherto taken part in them from catching the spirit of contention.
Some of this may seem jarring to us, as Aristotle is usually so calm and reasonable! Still, we should try and understand him.
First, by “constitution” Aristotle means something much more than the laws or political processes of a particular state. He refers more broadly how a particular order is “constituted,” in all its parts, i.e., its decision making, laws, culture, economics. One can think of their own familes as a kind of “constitution.” Parents make some “laws” that are explicit (perhaps, “no phones at the dinner table”), and there are some things that your family just “does not do.” You have ways of making decisions as a family that might vary, but would vary in a predictable fashion.
Let us suppose that mom and dad have a family meeting and declare together that “We are going to the beach this summer for vacation. You accept this as final even if perhaps you preferred to go elsewhere. You can now prepare to enjoy the beach as best you can. But what if dad says “beach” but mom says, “cabin in the mountains.” Their division would spark division amongst the children. Everyone would see the possibilities, and everyone would have an opinion. The uncertainty breeds division.
But division over where to go on vacation is relatively harmless. Imagine a different scenario with more at stake. Someone new moves into the neighborhood. He does live next door, but he is on your street several houses down. Some say that the new neighbor is a nicy guy, even if he is quirky and a bit mysterious. No one seems exactly sure what he does for work, of if he has a family. But he seems a bit lonely, so its important to reach out. Others say that he is a bad guy, mysterious for all the wrong reasons. He is someone to be avoided. But no one can say anything definitively.
Now imagine if your parents lacked clarity on how they viewed him. Sometimes they see him as a potential threat, sometimes they see him as a someone they should reach out to. They send mixed messages. They cannot decide. The kids too would be confused, and likely divided themselves. All kinds of theories would emerge in favor of every kind of approach.
This is the problem Aristotle alludes to. A threat far away is no problem. We have clarity on the situtation, and can relax. A threat close by also unites us, and again, it is the clarity that unites. A possible threat maybe in gray zone, maybe not, will pose a problem for the constituted order, even if they never actually attack. Their mere presence in the miasma of the in-between will breed internal division and disunion. Most “constitutions,” after all, are eroded from within rather than without.
It is the lack of clarity that divides internally.
In our own nation’s history we can think of some recent examples. Before we entered WW II, for example, the nation was seriously divided over whether or not we should involve ourselves in wars so far away, whether in Africa or Asia. Yes, the Nazi’s were bad, but how much did their “badness” impact us? After Pearl Harbor, we no longer had any doubts about the threat they posed, and we enetered the war entirely united.
This principle played itself out in our own living memory. After 9/11 as a nation we had clarity about our invasion of Afghanistan. We were attacked, and our attackers were there. We had our “Pearl Harbor” moment regarding Islamic terrorism. We invaded Afghanistan under a banner of national unity.
A few years later, we invaded Iraq with much less national unity and much less clarity. Was Iraq a threat? Well, maybe. Perhaps they had weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps Saddam Hussein would actively try to help those who wanted to harm us, but maybe not. We had no national agreement, but invaded anyway. The war lasted longer than we thought, cost more than we thought, and likely contributed to the financial collapse of 2008. One can argue that politically and culturally, we have not recovered from the fallout of these events.
Should we have invaded either country? The question is certainly important, but we can understand Aristotle’s point even better if we eliminate what we “should have” done from the equation. After all, the invasion done under the banner of unity did not have ultimate success (the Taliban is back in power), and the one conducted under national strife seems to have had some positive lasting effects (the constitution we helped install in 2005 still holds in Iraq). The question Aristotle wants us to consider is which conflict proved worse for our own constituted order, and here we have an obvious answer.
When we look at the Vietnam War, we again have a conflict almost guaranteed to cause internal division and threaten our constitution. We can see the violence and massive cultural changes in terms of family breakdown, the sexual revolution, drug culture, etc. as a byproduct of our involvement in a war in which we lacked clarity on the nature of the threat.
One the one hand, protecting South Vietnam could be seen as vital to our interests for many reasons:
We had pledged to defend the country from communist agression. Whether or not we should have done this, once declared, we had to back up our words if we wanted our words honored in other places throughout the world.
We had an interest in stopping the spread of communism, which was/is an evil ideology that wrecks great harm wherever it goes.
South Vietnam’s coastal geographic position made it a key strategic point of all of Southeast Asia.
But the fall of South Vietnam could be seen as not a threat to us for equally valid reasons:
Chinese and Soviet communism did pose a threat to us. But Vietnamese communism was more nationalistic, and thus, no real threat to the United States
Furthermore, Vietnam had a history of conflict with China. It would be in our interest not to fight them but to court them as an ally against China.
The perceived moral imbalance of a wealthy industrialized power attacking a poor peasant nation would never hold politically in the US, a country that mythologizes the underdog.
At the risk of oversimplifying a complex period in our history, our lack of clarity over a threat in the grey area led us into a labryinth that could only lead to the altering of our constittuted order.
Next week we will start our next book for the year, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne’s stories captivated the people of his time. Many of his books have been made into movies, which is one measure of cultural resonance. His stories had straightforward plots and generally stock characters, which aided their serialization into the popular magazines of the day. So on one level, I hope that the students enjoy the story as an adventure tale.
But like any great author, a particular worldview informs the work, and the story raises interesting questions for us to consider.
The Relationship Between Technology and Freedom
Verne wrote in the mid-late 19th century, a time of enormous technological change, perhaps a shift greater than what we have experienced the last twenty years or so. The Industrial Revolution not only remade the economy, it shifted how we worked and lived as a society. This period saw the spread of democratic ideals throughout Europe and America as well, and the casting off of traditional institutions and ideas. Elites across the western world lost a great deal of status, which culminated in World War I. So one the one hand, the growth of political freedom and technology went hand in hand.
Yet in our day, we see that the relationship between technology and freedom is not so straightforward. Our phones give us immediate access to information everywhere, but they also track us and have a way of fixating our attention. Computers allow us to be more creative and productive at work but this also means that work can follow us anywhere at anytime. Cars allow us to roam with more speed and flexibility than at any previous time in history but they break down frequently and require us to work long hours to maintain them.
This paradox is not confined to our day. For example, most saw the obvious benefits of the Industrial Revolution in the abundance of goods at cheaper prices for a great mass of people. In very real ways, the standard of living went up. To achieve this, millions of people had to work menial, robotically repetitive jobs in factories for 12-14 hours a day.
In Verne’s story, Captain Nemo consciously sought to free himself from the constraints of civilization’s laws and mores, and takes to the sea . . . where he spends his life confined in a metal shell. The Nautilus gives and takes away from Nemo and his crew in equal measure. We shall explore this relationship as we read.
The Relationship Between Man and Society
We often define freedom as the absence of constraints, i.e., no one tells me what to eat for lunch, or what movie to see, or who to vote for. In this respect Nemo and his crew are “free.” But as already noted, this form of freedom comes with a price. Philosophers and theologians outline another view of freedom, one where the constraints put upon us actually aid us in achieving our proper ends as men and women. For example, a train is certainly constrained by the tracks on which it moves. Yet those very constraints help the train be what it what it was created to be. Without tracks, a train cannot fulfill its proper “end,” or (to use Aristotle’s phrase) “telos.” A train sitting in the woods has no freedom to be a train.
So too, our families, communities, and our country certainly put constraints upon us. Children and adults alike resent them at times. We might rather play the video game than do our homework. We might rather finish our movie than clean the kitchen or change the diaper of a crying child. On a societal level, our politicians can annoy and disappoint us, and we may pine for other lands where the grass seems greener. Captain Nemo is the classic “tortured soul” that our culture has trained us to admire. We can certainly appreciate Nemo’s courage, intelligence, and devotion to his crew. But we need to see how Nemo’s separation from civilization has also warped his sensibilities. Our connections to those around us shape who we are, and without them, we are left with the freedom of the void.
Many business leaders, politicians, and the like, reflect that it is “lonely at the top.” I remember my pastor in college confiding to me that most all of his truly good friends were other pastors. They shared a common bond that others cannot quite relate to. So too, a ship’s captain will likely find the highest level of kinship with other captains. But because Nemo has severed ties with the world, he cut himself off from the possibility of that kinship. He has his ship, his books, and his studies, to comfort him.
This week we began our first reading of Machiavelli, one of the more controversial and intriguing political thinkers in history. I hope that the students will find him enjoyable and thought provoking.
Machiavelli comes with a reputation. To say that someone is “Machiavellian,” means that they are conniving, amoral, and without scruple. His most famous work, The Prince seems to famously advocate that “the ends justify the means,” another phrase from which many of us shrink.
Students are welcome to their opinion of Machiavelli, whatever that might be. But first we have to make sure we understand him first if we want to reject him.
First, we can tackle the troubling phrase, “the ends justify the means.” As a categorical absolute, this statement makes no sense. It makes as little sense as its opposite, “No ends justify the means.” This phrase usually means means that anything that one does to achieve a legitimate goal is justified. But even the most extreme devotee of this idea would not say that anything one does to achieve a goal be within bounds. When faced with an “end,” such as discovering buried treasure, we realize that some means would be justified to find it, and some would not. So context matters.
For example, if a single guy on sabbatical from his job with some money to burn wanted to take a few weeks to run around the globe in search of treasure, most would think that fine. If a family man on a tight budget did the same thing, we would raise an eyebrow and question the proportionality of the end and its means.
Machiavelli never directly said, “the ends justify the means,” but it is true that, while he recognized context and limits, he willingly expanded the boundaries of ends and means in ways not explored previously.*
Machiavelli did not invent poltical science as a discipline, but he did found its modern incarnation. Previous to Machiavelli, political thinkers started with an “absolute,” a particular idea of the good. They then sought to have the state in question molded to that absolute idea. For Plato, this meant the world of the Forms. For Aristotle, this was Nature. But other civilizations followed along this model. Medieval society, for example, had as its guiding star the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” and sought to model their political order around the heavenly order of seraphim, archangels, angels, and the like. Ancient Egypt looked back to a mythic past of harmony and balance, and Pharaoh’s ruled in attempt to recreate this balance, which they called Ma’at. Many other examples exist.
Machiavelli started from the other end. He wanted rulers to look at the situation they faced in real time first and not concern themselves with “ideals” not immediately relevant to their experience. But that is not to say that Machiavelli had no “end” in view. He wanted the Prince to stay in power, but not, I think, for the sake of power itself, but to bring about stability. Stability in itself was a worthy aim, because its lack would almost assuredly usher in violence on a broad scale.
In The Prince Machiavelli deals with various scenarios in which a ruler might strengthen or jeopardize his ability to stay in power.
Our first example involved what Machiavelli described as a “Mixed State.” Let us suppose you have a country (Redland) in which you have a Redland ruler with Redland people. Unfortunately their king is incompetent or destructive in his rule in some way. This leads to some in Redland to conspire with the king of Blueland to come in to Redland, and take over Redland for himself. Taking Redland would be relatively easy. After all, the fight is not fair, and it is not fair in your favor. Blueland’s army has to fight Redland’s army, but Blueland also has the assistance those within Redland who actively conspire to get you to take over, so your victory is quite likely.
But once Blueland takes over Redland, Blueland’s ruler will face many problems quickly, in fact, more problems than if they defeated them “straight up.”
For one, Blueland has to reward those in Redland who helped you to win. But how much should one trust such people? If you don’t reward them, they will turn against you just as they turned against their previous ruler. If you reward them too much, you will alienate your own army, as well as strengthen those who have already proved untrustworthy to their ruler.
If Redland has a different culture, customs, and language than Blueland, you will face additional problems (Machiavelli cites the example of Louis XII of France who quickly conquered, and then quickly lost, the city-state of Milan). Ideally, you can get away with changing as little as possible (mimicking the general policy of the Romans and Cyrus the Great of Persia). If you make the mistake of introducing new forms of taxation on the conquered people to pay for your conquest, you start the clock on your expiration date as the new king of Redland.
So far Machiavelli merely analyzes the problems. This aspect of Machiavelli is not what makes him controversial.
The controversy comes in what follows. A commentator from another era might have then said, “So, we see that Blueland should not conquer Redland even if invited in by a Redland faction.” Machiavelli essentially says, “If you find yourself in a position akin to the king of Blueland, how do you then maintain your power?” He does not concern himself with the morality of the conquest, but supposes the conquest as a thing that happened. The question then becomes, “What do I do now?” rather than “What should I have done?” Some argue he goes farther, and in effect tells rulers how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Personally I don’t go this far in my reading of Machiavelli, but I understand how others might. Regardless of what we think of what Machiavelli is doing, he certainly puts the emphasis on the pragmatic over the ideal.
He lays out the options:
If you withdraw entirely from Redland and effectively say, “Whoops, my mistake,” there will be chaos not only in Redland but also among your own people in Blueland, as you will look like an idiot who puts his hand to the plow but doesn’t see it through. You might lose power in both places. Again, rulers might want to keep their power for selfish reasons, but amidst political chaos, violence increases and many suffer. So withdrawal from Redland would likely help no one.
What most attempt is some kind of half-measure, where you try to govern your new territory from Blueland and find yourself continually frustrated. This would be akin to trying to babysit toddlers via Zoom. It wouldn’t go so well.
Most are not willing to do one of the two things that at this point must be done. You can either 1) Occupy Redland, or 2) Destroy Redland and repopulate it with people from Blueland.
Both paths come with problems. Occupying Redland will be expensive, and requires a great deal of energy and determination. Do you have the money and patience for this? Most do not.**
The quickest and easiest solution is to burn the territory and scatter the populace. Then, you resettle the land with your own people. This saves you the cost of paying your army for years on end, and gets all the bad stuff out of the way right at the start. The Normal Conquest of 1066, for example, largely fits this pattern. This obviously involves a lot pain and suffering for people in the short term. But it actually creates long term stability. Better to rip off the band-aid in one go than to prolong uncertainty and instability for decades.
Is this “the ends justifies the means?” Yes, and no. He does not counsel that Blueland should have invaded in the first place. He does argue that once Blueland has gotten their hands on a “Mixed State,” they have only bad choices in front of them. The best of the bad choices is the “morally correct” one, the choice that 1) Preserves stability in the long run, and 2) Deals quickly and decisively with the problem.
Again, Machiavelli differs from previous political theorists in that, while those before Machiavelli directed their ideas toward a particular end or goal, be it Nature, Heaven, a Golden Age, Machiavelli has it both ways. Like the Roman god Janus, he has two faces, not just one.
I look forward to seeing how the students will react to Machiavelli’s approach as the year continues.
Dave
*Our squeamishness about “the ends justify the means” is exposed somewhat in our love of stories where a man has something horrible happen to his friends or family, and then goes on a rampage to get his daughter back, or avenge his partner’s death, or something like this. Most often these movie heroes cause a great deal more destruction than they themselves experienced, but we cheer them on anyway.
**The Romans grew their power in Italy largely through this method, which requires extraordinary patience and conviction of purpose, something Machiavelli does not mention, though perhaps he does elsewhere.
This year, before we delve into specifics about America towards the spring semester, we want to take time to examine the big questions about culture and governance that apply to all civilizations everywhere.
To that end, we spent time this week with Aristotle’s thoughts on what makes a state. We looked at an excerpt from his Politics which reads,
It must be the case that only a shared sense of goodness and justice amongst its citizens can make a state. Merely occupying the same territory together with other men cannot make a state, as can be shown through example. If the citizens of Megara and Corinth [bitter rivals, but very close geographically] were put under one government together, that would not make them one in fact.
Nor can a state be made merely through common association and interest. Suppose a group of people with different professions—a carpenter, a farmer, a merchant— all living together exchanging goods under a common system of law. Imagine their number to be in excess of 10,000 [a very big number for ancient Greeks]. Imagine these people had nothing in common other than the necessities of living and obedience to the law.
The members of this group all might come together in a common place to exchange goods and services, but if each person treated their own house and their own person as a state unto itself, how could they be a state, even if they happened to occupy the same geography?
It is clear, therefore, that a city is not only people occupying the same geography under the same law. Their true unity must come from their common purpose and common life together. True– no state can exist without a sufficient number of people living under the same law. But this in itself cannot make a state.
Aristotle wants us to distinguish between “name” and “fact.” We can all understand, for example, that if I held up a pencil and called it a pen, that would not in fact make it so. Even if I made this assertion for years, the pencil would not be any closer to a pen than when I started.
We can take this a bit deeper. Imagine someone made a robot that looked just like you. It talked like you, walked like you, and more or less mimicked you perfectly. We might even call this robot by your name. But the robot is not you. Among other things, it lacks what we cannot directly see or observe, such as a soul, a conscience, thoughts and beliefs, and so forth. Calling it “you” would not make it so. In other words, we properly name things not just by what they are made of, but by their purpose, their “telos” or end. What a thing is made from is not what a thing “is.”
If we apply this concept to country’s, we may find ourselves a bit uncomfortable. Aristotle pushes us to think of a state as more than a group of people following the same laws, within a defined border, exchanging goods and services. This, he argued, may be a country in name but not in fact. It may look like a country from the outside, but from the inside, nothing exists to bind the people together. The people have no shared purpose, no shared “telos,” no shared love.
I asked the students to think about whether or not Aristotle would call the United States today a country in fact, or in name only.
In favor of the “name only” position some argued that
We do not share a common religion
We do not share a common culture
We do not have a common point of attention with movies, music, or other media
We are deeply divided politically, with many not trusting our basic institutions
We have essentially become “states unto ourselves.” With online shopping, we don’t even need to interact with each other to buy and sell things
But others countered that
Sports provide us a way to come together across cultural, religious, and polticial divides
American ideals of freedom and self-determination still unite (almost) all Americans
When we have to, as in the case of natural disaster or war, we can still “rally round the flag.”
Sure, Americans fight with each other, but we always have. Think of our nation’s identity like a big, noisy family that argues with each other but still get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We find a way to “hug it out.”
As always, the students are encouraged to take whatever position they think correct and defend it as best they can.
Thanks so much for your support, and have a great weekend,
It is sometimes possible to enjoy a book that one cannot understand very much of, provided that
The author has a great deal of fun with the subject, and
The author clearly and deeply understands the subject, which allows him to express his ideas clearly.
I confess to knowing nothing about almost all of the authors CS Lewis discusses in his wonderful English Literature of the Sixteenth Century. Anecdotes exist that indicate Lewis felt real heaviness and irritation in cranking this one out, but this does not come across in the writing. It reads light as a feather. Lewis generously shares his opinions about literature, but mixes these opinions with a marbling of philosophy, history, and cultural analysis. All this makes Lewis’ work come alive and relevant for today. This is some of Lewis’ best writing, and his wit and humor shine on most every page.
Lewis finds this era worthy of extended examination because it stands at a nexus of a variety of momentous shifts:
The early 16th century saw the last vestiges of the medieval worldview have their final say
The early-mid 16th century saw the high water mark of Renaissance humanism and classicism
The entire 16th century saw tumultuous religious upheaval caused by the Reformation, followed on by the Counter-Reformation.
Lewis keeps his focus on the literature, as is proper, but his opening chapters also set the stage historically and culturally. For the historian, Lewis goes to great lengths to reset the balance between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but I have covered that topic elsewhere. His basic point for in these opening chapters involves prepping us for the fact that literature at a nexus of cultural death and rebirth tends not to be very good. Things eventually sorted themselves out with Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare, but the early to middle part of the century left much to be desired. The main fault of the writers of this time involved a hyper-exaggeration of a certain strengths of cultural movements, which robbed much of their writing of life and merit.
To be sure, the political, cultural and religious tumult eventually settled into a new equilibrium, and after that, writers could borrow from different literary genres much more freely and productively, but until that happened, very little of anything transcendent value got written.
This dynamic makes sense to us if we scale down this larger point to something more tangible to our own experience of, for example, adolescence. Our early teen years involve an ending of childhood and the beginning of something else, akin to a larger scale cultural breakdown and rebirth in our immediate personal experience.
I grew up playing drums and listening to a lot of my dad’s music. This was a pre-headphone era, so we all heard what he played on the living room stereo. I got a healthy dose of the Beatles, Otis Redding, Willie Nelson, and Beethoven, among others. I enjoyed almost all of it. But as a 16 year old drummer, I wanted something else (unfortunately it took a few more years before I appreciated Ringo and Al Jackson), and a way to distinguish myself. One day, my cousin’s friend played for me the opening 30 seconds of Rush’s “The Spirit of Radio,” and it was all over for me. I was enchanted. I had never heard progressive rock, so I dove in headfirst. I immediately went to Tower Records and bought Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Hemispheres.* For the next year, I then decided that everything about my drumming, and many other things about my life besides, must conform to Neil Peart’s particular style.
This improved my drumming in certain small ways but ruined it in others. Things got misshapen. If one believes (as I did), that even when drumming for my high school jazz band I should act like Neil Peart, you sound like an idiot. It took hearing a recording of my playing at the county jazz festival, and the judges comments, to make me realize I needed to snap out of it. I spent the following summer listening Glenn Miller and Count Basie, and at least partially fixed things for my senior year.
This was a classic, “It’s not you, it’s me,” problem. Neil Peart has much to teach any drummer, but not if you become enslaved to his aura. In that state, one plays drums essentially to convince an audience, and you lose all sense of proportion.
Times of personal and cultural death and rebirth offer many opportunities. In separating certain aspects of life from a larger context, we can see them with more clarity, and this is exciting. I’d like to think that in college, I could throw in occasional progressive wrinkles without being bound by them. Unfortunately our internal instability in those moments of initial discovery make it very difficult for us to take fruitful advantage of whatever insights we gain. The same applies to a culture at large. In the midst of breakdown, when things come apart, we notice what we had never seen before. This is great as far it goes, but it has to kept in balance.
Lewis shows us how this dynamic plays out in the literature of the period.
Oftentimes, what seems like an era in the fullness of its strength actually ends up being something akin to “terminal lucidity,” a burst of energy many dying patients experience before passing. For example, the 1980’s seemed like the crest of a wave of American confidence. We had Reagan-era optimism. We won the Cold War. We grew economically. We wore bright colors and made our hair big. But look again, and we see that some of what we were about shows an uncomfortable exaggeration of a theme. We should never have attempted, for example, “Hands Across America.” Big hair is one thing, and glam-metal fashion ca. 1988 quite another.
This “hyper-extension” of cultural posturing naturally collapsed, leading to completely opposite atmosphere. Now we had grunge music with lyrics about how bad things were, loose clothes (anyone who tucked in their shirt at my high school in 1990 would have been hopelessly labeled as a nerd), and “heroin chic.”
In neither era do men or women look particularly normal, with both exaggerating certain ideas to a point of being ridiculous.**
I much prefer medieval literature to that of the Renaissance, but by the end of the Middle Ages, we saw the same kind of unfortunate exaggerations. Lewis suggests that Scotland’s king James IV perfectly encapsulates the problem with the period. “Peak” medieval chivalry ca. 1350 had much to commend it. It ennobled men, and greatly elevated the status of women.^ The courtly love tradition had its good parts, though the best literature of the period grappled with some of the contradictions and tensions involved in knightly service of ladies. The literary figure of Lancelot encapsulates this well.
James IV (b. 1473, d. 1513) had many good qualities. He was open hearted, high spirited, and generous in the best spirit of chivalry. He had courage, but a variety of contemporaries remarked that he had too much courage to be king. He needed more prudence and policy. Many of his contemporaries felt that James never should have fought the Battle of Flodden, where he met his death (in Henry IV, Pt. 1 Shakespeare may have had James IV as a model in mind for Hotspur). As to the service of ladies, James IV almost parodies the medieval complexity and tension by abandoning himself to countless prostitutes and fathering a variety of illegitimate children. His exaggerated chivalric ideals made chivalry itself look ridiculous.
So too, late medieval literature had little balance and often none of the sense of play of the best medieval prose from previous decades. Lewis cites the work of John Fisher, who drank heavily from the medieval moral sense, but alas, could not let an idea go once he fixed himself upon it. In his The Perfect Religion, he instructs a nun to be
Grateful for being created to live in a Christian society. As Lewis states, this is well and proper. But Fisher continues, telling the nun to be
Grateful for being created at all. This is still a good sentiment, but perhaps was already covered in the first injunction? Fisher doesn’t stop there, however, urging that she remain
Grateful that she was created as a human being, and not a toad, and tops this off with the counsel that
She be grateful that she was created instead of all the other people that might have been created instead of her.
Lewis rightly points out that by the third injunction, Fisher has descended into absurdity (“she” could never be a toad—not an option for a human being,) and by the fourth, a work intended to promote Catholic orthodoxy seems to promote a gnostic heresy of the pre-existence of souls and the separation of the body from personhood. Lewis writes, “Fisher’s sincerity is undoubted, but his intellect is not as hard at work as he supposes. We can’t hold Fisher accountable for not answering his questions, but he doesn’t seem to know that he is raising them.”
This lack of balance spilled over into the religiously polemical works of Fisher and Thomas More. Both wrote defenses of purgatory, and both in their zeal latched onto certain rogue strands of late-medieval asceticism. In Dante, the souls in Purgatory sing psalms joyfully, and their bodies suffer in service of redemption, and is in fact an integral part of their redemption. For Fisher and More, we have denigration of the body, so that the purgation is for the sake of purgation itself, and their vision of purgatory means a practically pointless circle of suffering.
We should expect this tendency to exaggeration during times of cultural fragmentation. What was once solid now moves apart. The bell curve of ABC, CBS, and NBC turns into a thousand scattered points, first with cable news, then with the internet. When this scattering happens, we naturally lose our bearings and find what we can to latch onto. What we latch onto, however, will be isolated from a larger context, and thus will lose its relationship to the broader whole.
I have mentioned two late-medieval/early modern Catholics, now for some early Reformation humanists (though it was certainly possible to be a Catholic humanist, i.e. Erasmus). John Colet wished to return to a more pure age, and thus urged a strict “anti-body,” morality upon his readers. He saw no real difference between marital union and fornication, and in fact wished that no one would get married. Marriage and the body proved to messy for his taste. He acknowledged that no marriage would mean the end of the human race on earth, but oh well, these things happen.
The humanists loved classical culture, either for its perceived purity, hardy innocence, or merely because the classical age was not feudal and medieval, the worst of all sins. This meant that he abandoned allegorical or symbolic interpretations of the Bible in search of a platonic “pure” meaning of the text. Others shared these views, but his thoughts on the subject of Latin take him into absurdity in a similar way to Fisher. On the one hand, as mentioned, he was a strict moralist with gnostic tendencies. This led to a distrust of much of pagan literature. On the other, he hated all things medieval, and that meant hating medieval church Latin, which had been “corrupted” from the past that was pure, not in morality, perhaps, but in its use of language. Lewis writes,
{For Colet] the spirit of the classical writers was to be avoided like the plague, and their form to be imposed as an indispensable law. When he founded St. Paul’s school, the boys were to be guarded from every word that did not occur in Vergil or Cicero, and equally, from every idea that did. No more deadly or irrational scheme could have been propounded. Deadly, because it cut the boys off from all the best literature in the Latin world, and irrational, because it put absurd value on certain arbitrary elements dissociated from the spirit which begot them, and for whose sake they existed. For Colet, this seemed a small price to pay for excluding all barbarism, all corruption, all “adulterated” Latin.
We noted above that when something reaches its end, it can mimic strength through one final, exaggerated effort. It might seem on the one hand that Latin had no greater champion than Colet, who sought to emphasize only the “best” Latin. But Lewis points out that all of the efforts of the Renaissance humanists to preserve the purity of latin in fact killed it. A variety of medieval people actually spoke latin (churchmen and merchants), or at least some version of latin. Only a very few scholars knew classical Latin, and fewer still spoke it, and then only in the academy. The attempt to save Latin destroyed it.
It is usually more fun to read a review where the critic pans rather than praises. I have focused on the first half of the book, where the literature, with a few exceptions, stunk. But we should remember that the century ended with some of England’s greatest writers, and with Shakespeare we have an “all-timer.” When we recall Shakespeare’s best work, we see how much more comfortable he was with tension and play than the previous generation. He incorporated medieval and modern elements without going out of his way to defend either. Stylistically, he stuck to certain meters and forms, but not all the time. He could happily dance between them. His characters are rich, both particular to his time and universal.
This can give us hope for our own future. We live in an era where many of the old categories of meaning and belonging have vanished. As a result we see the same kinds of intensification and exaggeration that beset the 16th century. But they learned, and so might we. The path forward comes from Thomas More’s most famous and least understood work, his Utopia. As mentioned previously, Lewis felt that much of More’s polemical work fell prey to the vices of the age. Those vices, he argues, cloud our perception of Utopia. Many moderns attempt to find a point to the work, obscured or otherwise, that will clue us in to More’s meaning in the text. Much of More’s other work had a definite argument. So too must Utopia, right? Was More secretly supporting communism, or was he a closet Protestant? Or perhaps he sought to make some other political point buried in code?
Lewis points out, however, that any attempt to pin the book down specifically one way or another will fail, because More writes in this text like a medieval. Given that medievalism was practically dead at this point, it is no wonder that even his contemporaries remained confused. But Lewis argues the book has no particular point. It’s meant as a romp of this and that, no more, no less. The medievals loved to bandy ideas about and put them in tension and opposition to one another. For them, this was fun–and that signifies of a more healthy age than either our own or the early 16th century. They were more interested in play, we in logical, deductive writing that makes a point and gets somewhere definite.
For us, as for the 16th century, the way out of our predicament involves not stronger arguments, but a greater sense of fun. More shows us that even politics, whatever our position may be, can bear the weight of humor in any age.
*I also bought what was at that time their most recent album, Hold Your Fire. Rush fans may relate to my utter shock, bewilderment, and even anger at going from “Red Barchetta” to “Time Stand Still” in the space of 30 seconds. To this day I still feel that Hold Your Fire is a ridiculous album. Not until Counterparts would I start to forgive them.
**At first glance no two things could seem further apart than the late 80’s and early 90’s aesthetic. But both participate in the same cultural breakdown, and are likely, therefore to share some crucial commonalities. A second glance shows that, surprise, surprise, they have androgyny in common. In glam metal, a lot of guys dressed similarly to women (tight pants, makeup, etc.) and in grunge, a lot women looked like men (short hair, lack of showering, no care for appearance, etc.) No doubt grunge devotees would have been horrified to learn that they shared a crucial similarity with hair metal, but there you go.
In one section of the book, Lewis shows that Thomas More (Catholic) and William Tyndale (Protestant), who wrote page after page attacking one another, actually had a lot in common. Both had similar economic ideas. And on Henry VIII annulment and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, the hot-button issue of the day, they were in lock-step agreement. Both seem to have missed this fact at the time.
^For an example of this, note the famous story from Froissart about how Edward III heeded his wife’s call for clemency for the population of Calais.
A Stick in the Mud 