Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe 1443896292, 9781443896290

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Part One: Historic, Poetic, and Philosophic Grounds of Classical Rationalism in Ancient Thought
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Two: Medieval Political Thought and the Classical Liberalism of Grotius and Hobbes
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Three: The Reconsideration of Classical Rationalism in Enlightenment Republicanism
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Four: Contemporary Reflections on the Relation of Classical Rationalism to Modern Democracy, Economics, and Education
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe Edited by

Ann Ward

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe Edited by Ann Ward This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Ann Ward and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book 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 copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9629-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9629-0

For Lee and Mary

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... x Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe Ann Ward Part One: Historic, Poetic, and Philosophic Grounds of Classical Rationalism in Ancient Thought Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 16 A More Suitable Story: Herodotus’ Helen and the Poetic Origins of the Hellenes Lindsay Mahon Rathnam Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33 A Naturally Disastrous War: Nature, Politics, and Historiography in Thucydides’ History Bernard J. Dobski Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 53 Reason, Religion, and Freedom of Speech: Socrates and Antigone as Democratic Heroes? Ann Ward Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 76 The Platonic Rehabilitation of Tragedy Robert A. Ballingall Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 97 Classical Reason and Justice Leah Bradshaw

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Part Two: Medieval Political Thought and the Classical Liberalism of Grotius and Hobbes Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 114 The Best Regime in St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Regno Patrick N. Cain Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 126 Hugo Grotius’ Modern Civil Religion: Source of Europe’s Stoic Liberalism? Jeremy Seth Geddert Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 151 Thomas Hobbes on Sovereign Authorization and the Problem of Liberal Nationalism Lee Ward Part Three: The Reconsideration of Classical Rationalism in Enlightenment Republicanism Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 176 The Last Liberal? Montesquieu’s Revision of Modern Natural Right Andrew Bibby Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 198 John Adams, Turgot, and the New Science of Politics Timothy W. Burns Part Four: Contemporary Reflections on the Relation of Classical Rationalism to Modern Democracy, Economics, and Education Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 232 On Classical Political Rationalism as a Source for Contemporary Christian Pluralism Kevin M. Cherry Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 252 Thomas Piketty’s “Remedies” for Oligarchy: Exacerbating and Globalizing the E.U.’s Democratic Deficit David Lewis Schaefer

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Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 266 Beyond Nature and Necessity: The Ennobling of Democracy in the Twenty-First Century Emma Planinc Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 287 An Argument for Critical and Liberal Education: A Synthesis of Ancient and Modern Thought Naomi Couto Contributors ............................................................................................. 307 Index ........................................................................................................ 310

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present collection grew out of a workshop I developed and chaired for the 15th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), What’s New in the New Europe? Redefining Politics, Culture, Identity, held at the University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland, July 11-15, 2016. I wish to thank Professor Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney of the University of Lodz for convening the conference and the ISSEI for sponsoring it. I also thank Dr. Edna Rosenthal of the ISSEI for inviting me to develop and chair the workshop that has given the name to this volume, and Ms. Victoria Carruthers of Cambridge Scholars Publishing for her support in turning the proceedings of the workshop into the present collection. I also wish to thank Campion College at the University of Regina for awarding me a Campion College President’s Research Award that supported my participation in the 15th International Conference of the ISSEI. I wish to acknowledge and express my gratitude to the participants of the workshop and the contributors to the collection. It gives me great inspiration to have friends and colleagues who do such excellent and insightful research and writing, and from whom I continually learn. My colleagues and students at Campion College and the University of Regina have also given me great intellectual stimulation for more than a decade, and I would especially like to thank Dr. John Meehan, SJ, President of Campion College, for his friendship and support over the years. Although it is with sadness that I leave Campion College, as I look ahead I am excited to be joining new colleagues at Baylor University and I look forward to many conversations with students there. Finally, my deepest thanks are for my husband and colleague Lee Ward who will be journeying with me to Baylor University, and for our daughter Mary whose growth teaches me new things every day. Without them nothing would be possible. Regina, June 2017 Ann Ward

CHAPTER ONE CLASSICAL RATIONALISM AND THE POLITICS OF EUROPE ANN WARD

Dramatic changes have occurred in Europe in the past quarter century. The fall of communism and the expansion of liberal democracy together with the desire to project a new “Europa” that is united, peaceful and prosperous into the future, illustrates that political philosophy is what grounds European political discourse and identity. Thus, an understanding of Europe’s political past and potential future directs us to the question: What is political philosophy? An exploration of the question of political philosophy points us back to Socrates, widely regarded as the first political philosopher, or the first philosopher to make human beings central to philosophic inquiry. His political thought, which we know primarily through Plato’s Socratic dialogues, turns to the human soul as it reflects on and is drawn toward the good, and hence thinks about justice, virtue and the best regime in a universal way. But what is the justification for such an enterprise? Medieval Europeans looked to Scripture as authoritative on questions of justice or how one ought to live, leading to attempts by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas to harmonize classical reason with revelation. Modern Enlightenment philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau discarded the classical quest for natural right in favour of individual natural rights secured by the social contract. The rise of historical consciousness in nineteenth-century Europe led to a reassessment and critique of Socratic rationalism by philosophers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the name of history, faith and art. Scholars such as Thomas Pangle suggest that a revival of the study of Socratic political philosophy will revive serious consideration of the questions of justice or how one ought to live, and demonstrate that classical rationalism is the essential dialectical partner and interrogator of

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the political theology of Scripture/scripture(s). Classical rationalism in this context is understood as a necessary alternative to (1) modern liberalism, inadequate to the task of taking questions of justice seriously as it insists on regarding all religious claims and understandings of virtue (including the virtue aspired to by the ancients) as private preferences rather than definitive of the public sphere; and (2) contemporary postmodernism, which has abandoned rationalism altogether by rejecting any truth claims not understood as relative. In response to the hypothetical question: Why do political philosophers need to study Scripture(s), Pangle, in Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, argues that the study of the Bible, especially the books of Genesis up to Abraham, is necessary to revive serious reflection on the question of justice or righteousness, or how one ought to live. The revival of this question will in turn revive serious consideration of classical rationalism or Socratic political philosophy, the central concern of which is also justice and the right way to live, as the essential dialectical partner and interrogator of the political theology of the Bible. Classical rationalism in this context is understood as a necessary and refreshing alternative in thought, not deed, to the modern liberal philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, whose “cultural revolution” has been successful in, “reduc[ing] religious reflection and argument [along with reflection and argument about virtue, as it was aspired to in ancient republicanism] to the status of a birdlike cacophony of merely private and personal, shallow and shifting, opinions”.1 It is also an alternative to the “postmodernism” which has abandoned rationalism altogether by rejecting any truth claims not understood as relative. Pangle, however, is not entirely dismissive of modern political philosophy. Indeed, part of his project in studying the Bible is to recover the “radical” perspective of modern political philosophers as they sought to confront and discard the fundamental challenge posed by Scripture to their revolutionary natural rights philosophy. Still, modern political philosophy, or “classical liberalism,” is inadequate to the task of taking justice and how one ought to live seriously, as modern philosophers regard “faith” as merely “belief.” But, to fully appreciate the encounter with Scripture, Pangle argues that we must see that “faith” understands itself to be rooted in knowledge, not simply belief, a knowledge superior to that of unassisted reason.2 This volume is indebted to Pangle’s insight that classical rationalism or the type of philosophy practised by Socrates is the most serious challenge to political theology such as that found in the Bible. Yet, it is hard to avoid the impression that for Pangle, classical rationalism has a greater affinity

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to Scripture(s) than to modern rationalism or postmodern philosophy. More to the point, Pangle seems to suggest that Socrates is closer to Abraham, the father of faith, than for instance to Hobbes or Marx. In contradistinction to Pangle’s argument, chapters in this volume will argue that persons of faith such as Abraham or Antigone would more likely be among Socrates’ accusers, and assumes that political philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Marx would be among his dialectical partners. This volume, therefore, views modern political philosophy, or classical liberalism and its critics, as indeed adequate to the task of taking justice and the right way to live seriously, even if there is room for debate and disagreement. In doing so, it enables the recovery of classical rationalism to be consistent with modern science. In other words, this volume does not close political philosophy off from a dialectical conversation with modern natural science as Pangle’s book seems to do by pulling it into a dialectical conversation with Scripture. Chiara Bottici’s A Philosophy of Political Myth provides a new and persuasive theory of political myth that gives a philosophical framework for understanding what political myths are, that they still exist and indeed why we still need them. Political myth, Bottici argues, addresses the human need for a feeling of significance arising out of the historical circumstances of the time. Significance, the provision of which is the most important aspect of political myth, is understood as “substantiating” or “grounding the world in which human beings live,” by answering the question of “why” by narrating “whence.”3 Myth explains where we came from and thus where we are going, yet is distinct from religion. Whereas religion tries to give meaning to human life as such and for all time, myth seeks to give significance to particular peoples in changing historical circumstances. The second aspect of political myth is that, in providing significance, they prompt people to action. The political mythmaker, according to Bottici, has “the immediate intent of inciting people to action,” and therefore relies for his or her efficacy on strong emotional appeals.4 Although appealing to collective emotions, Bottici argues that political myth, such as that of the general strike, is an essential ingredient for modern progress even if it can also be a force for regress, such as the myth of the Aryan race.5 Bottici’s book is similar to this volume in that it analyzes the ancient Greek, medieval, early modern, Enlightenment, nineteenth century and contemporary political epochs in European history. Yet, it does so through the lens of the political mythmaker, whereas this volume will do so through the lens of the political philosopher. The political mythmaker, according to Bottici, uses their imagination to appeal to the emotions of

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their audience by providing them a sense of the political significance of their particular people in history. The political philosopher, on the other hand, this volume assumes, understands him or herself as using their reason to connect with the reason of their audience to provide a rational account of political justice based in the universal characteristics of human beings at all times. Political philosophy in this sense is like religion, except that it typically grounds its arguments in a concept of “nature’ rather than an emotional appeal to the supernatural. The contributors to this collection, therefore, maintain the distinction between the mythos of poetry and the logos of philosophy that Bottici denies, even while acknowledging that the two genres can provide each other mutual aid. Moreover, whereas Bottici considers the importance of political myth to all forms of modern politics including fascism, communism and theocracy, this volume will focus on the impact that classical rationalism and its reconsideration can have on liberal democracy. My previous volume with Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Socrates: Reason or Unreason as the Foundation of European Identity, sought to recover and revise our understanding of Socratic philosophy as an appropriate paradigm for European identity in the past and for constructing a new European identity in the future. In contrast to scholars such as Nussbaum (1986, 1990) and Damasio (1994), but in agreement with scholars such as Sokolon (2010), contributors in this volume sought to reestablish the place of the emotional and the physical in classical political philosophy. They also often viewed the Platonic dialogue as bridging the divide between philosophy and art rather than solidifying it. Moreover, Socrates is the undisputed hero of this volume. In the first half Socrates emerges as an exceptional human being whose soul, in partnership with the body, harmonizes reason and emotion in the quest for knowledge of the good in dialogue with others in such a way that is open to the divine. The second half reveals that Socrates and the way of life he represents is not simply a phenomenon of antiquity but can and should be contemporary. Socratic philosophy is either defended from the critiques of postmodern thinkers, or shown to actually be the inspiration and object of these thinkers themselves. There are many similarities between my previous volume and the present one. For instance, excepting the medieval period included in the present volume, they both analyze the ancient Greek, early modern, Enlightenment, nineteenth century and contemporary political epochs in European history. Both also include chapters that analyze the mutually beneficial connection between classical rationalism and poetry, although chapters in the present volume also highlight their distinction. This present

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volume differs from the previous one in other significant ways as well. The previous volume explores how Socratic philosophy or classical rationalism grounds European “identity.” Included in the concept of identity is the European understanding of historical self-consciousness, art and creativity, and faith and transcendence. The present volume, on the other hand, explores how classical rationalism grounds European “politics,” more particularly liberal, democratic politics and what is commonly understood as the “neoliberal” economic model that supports this politics. Moreover, whereas in the previous volume Socrates emerges as the undisputed hero of the book, in the present volume there is more debate. Although some contributors view Socrates and classical rationalism as a worthy model that can inform and uplift our understanding of democracy, other contributors view key alternatives such as liberalism, Marxism and postmodernism as superior philosophic prescriptions for Europe’s political present and future. The organizing principle of David McGrane and Neil Hibbert’s Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics, is the belief that the conceptual tools of political theory can be used to make political practices more comprehensible, salient and meaningful. As such, this book represents the first explicit attempt to connect political theory and Canadian politics. The overall argument of the collection is that, through the application of political theory, Canadian politics can be understood much better. The political subjects tackled in the book through the lens of political theory are ideology, equality, social justice, democracy, citizenship, ethnic diversity and minority rights, nationalism, and Canada’s place in the world. The edited collection proposed here also has as its core organizing principle the belief that political philosophy and theory can be applied to political practice to make the latter more comprehensible. Yet, this collection takes European rather than Canadian politics as its object, and analyzes canonical thinkers in the history of political philosophy. Moreover, the political practices and institutions illuminated include the role of poetry in lawmaking, the freedom of speech, monarchy, liberal nationalism and state sovereignty, commerce, class warfare, environmentalism and global capitalism and the distribution of wealth. This volume explores Socratic rationalism, its relation to poetry and history, the major alternatives to Socratic rationalism in the history of political philosophy, the potential impact of returning to it in contemporary times, and related themes. It takes an interdisciplinary approach with fifteen chapters from scholars in the fields of Philosophy and Political Science. The contributors research and teach in Canada and the United States.

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Part One explores how classical rationalism is grounded in historic, poetic, and philosophic sources in the ancient world. In chapter two, Lindsay Mahon Rathnam argues that in his Histories Herodotus indicates that Hellenic piety is a derivation from the Egyptian. Yet, in bringing the Egyptian gods to Greece the Hellenic poets transformed them. Herodotus is explicit about the relative recentness of this introduction, and the key role played by the poets in shaping the Greek pantheon. According to Rathnam the character of this transmission becomes clearer through Herodotus’ exegesis of the story of Helen in Egypt, which reveals both the creative and destructive power of beauty and the great poets’ complex relation with Egyptian sources. This takes place through an extended treatment of the events of the Trojan war, told from the Egyptian perspective. In his treatment of Helen’s excursion in Egypt, Herodotus, Rathnam argues, allows us to see the scaffolding at work in Homer’s renovation of the Egyptian pantheon. By clarifying how—and why— Homer reshaped the Egyptian gods, Herodotus brings out what is distinctive about the Hellenes. Homer transformed gods that circumscribe human action into those that support it. Herodotus thus reveals the power of narrative, including Socratic narratives that illustrate the justice of supporting justice, to sustain flourishing communities and uphold human agency. Bernard J. Dobski, in chapter three, considering Thucydides’ explicit linking of natural disasters to the suffering endured during the Peloponnesian war and thus to his claim for the war’s surpassing greatness, argues that there is a complex triangulation between Thucydides’ treatment of politics, nature, and historiography at work in his History. Dobski’s chapter aims to clarify the nature of this triangulation, concluding that for Thucydides the sharp distinction between a nature governed by fixed, immutable and objectively knowable laws, on the one hand, and a cosmos governed by gods interested in upholding justice among men, on the other hand, represents a false dichotomy. The contrast between the perspectives of Demosthenes, the supremely talented human being in the History, and Thucydides himself are particularly instructive here. According to Dobski, for Demosthenes the material world is something that can be manipulated to serve his own political and military goals. While this view excludes the belief in divine beings who intervene in human affairs by moving natural elements according to their own wishes, it nevertheless views the material world as something that can be known and manipulated by man, as an ordered home that is not completely indifferent to human hopes and aspirations. Thucydides, on the other hand, views the material world as having what Dobski calls “ways” or “manners” which can be discerned or

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grasped, but not fixed natures whose material causes can be known objectively by the unaided human mind. In chapter four, I explore freedom of speech as it is exemplified by Plato’s Socrates and Sophocles’ Antigone, often seen as models of free inquiry and expression in the face of unjust political power. In the Apology of Socrates, Socrates argues that he spent his life questioning the authoritative opinions that supported the laws of Athens. Socrates’ philosophic life resulted in his trial for not believing in the city’s gods and corrupting the young. He is found guilty and condemned to death, a death which Socrates’ accepts rather than cease his unique way of speaking. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone defies Creon’s decree to leave her brother Polynices unburied, accepting the penalty of death for her actions. Before being buried alive she speaks against Creon’s tyrannical rule of Thebes, claiming that she gives voice to a citizenry too afraid to critique their ruler. Framing the discussion with an analysis of John Stuart Mill’s advocacy of free speech in On Liberty, I argue that although both Socrates and Antigone can be viewed as ancient precursors to the democratic defence of freedom of speech, there are important ways in which they differ. Whereas Antigone puts loyalty to family and divine law above human law, Socrates acknowledges that he has not cared for the things of his family and, despite characterizing himself as a gift of the god to the city, gains a rational self-knowledge that can put military necessity ahead of the desire to give the dead a proper burial, coming to light in his defense of the generals of the Battle of Arginusae. I thus conclude that Antigone would be one of Socrates’ accusers rather than defenders, but surprisingly more at home in a modern, liberal democracy than one guided by Socratic reason. In chapter five, Robert Ballingall argues that although Plato is usually considered a critic of poetry and of tragedy in particular, in the Laws we read of a city-in-speech whose “whole regime is constructed as the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy” (817b3-5). Ballingall’s chapter takes up the apparent rehabilitation of tragedy in the Laws and argues that it is in fact consistent with the critique of tragedy in the Republic. Although the Athenian stranger appears to praise the regime that he conceives of in calling it a tragedy, Ballingall shows that he quietly means to insult it. The regime is a tragedy, he implies, because it merely—and hence regrettably—imitates the way of life that is best and truly serious. Attending to key passages that Plato dramatically connects with 817a-d, Ballingall argues that the reasons adduced for this shortcoming are the very ones responsible for tragedy’s enduring appeal. Like Socrates in the

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Republic, the Athenian counsels the censorship of tragic lamentations. But his arguments suggest that the allure of tragedy is ineradicable and the cause of the unfortunate necessities to which politics must resort, even or precisely at its best. Leah Bradshaw, in chapter six, argues that in Aristotelian ethics there is an inseparable connection among character, reason and virtue. For Aristotle, according to Bradshaw, it is not possible to make a claim about what is a reasonable choice without at the same time making a claim about what is good. The “good person,” for Aristotle, is the one who chooses in accordance with the beautiful, the advantageous and the pleasant, but these goals are framed by an understanding of justice and temperance. Justice and temperance are virtues, and they are artful consequences of reasonable deliberation. Yet, deliberation and judgments about courses of action that follow are always taken in particular contexts, and thus to the triad of character, virtue and reason, Bradshaw argues that Aristotle adds politics. Famously, Aristotle claims that man is by nature a political animal and that anyone who lives outside of a polis is either a beast or a god. But, through her analysis of the distinction between the good citizen and the good man, Bradshaw discovers that for Aristotle it is in fact possible for a singular human being, through reason or more particularly thinking as the transcendent aspect of reason that grasps something about justice and the good independent of one’s immediate context, to put themselves outside of the contours of their particular regime and stand alone as a self-governing individual. Bradshaw concludes by examining Thomas Hobbes’s instrumental understanding of reason as representative of modernity and which is anathema to Aristotle’s entanglement of reason with politics, character, virtue and vice. Medieval political thought and the classical liberalism of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes is the subject of Part Two. Patrick N. Cain, in chapter seven, analyzes St. Thomas Aquinas’s argument for kingship, without any reference to natural law, in De Regno. Unlike Aquinas’s other works in which he endorses a mixed regime, De Regno takes politics as its primary subject matter, apparently addressing itself to an actual ruler—the king of Cyprus. Cain sheds light on the enormity of the task Aquinas sets for himself in De Regno, incorporating not only scripture’s, philosophy’s, and statesmanship’s understanding of the best regime, it also addresses the practical realities of political life, including the possibility of securing kingly government against tyranny. Yet, as Cain progresses through the text, he discovers that just as Aquinas’s philosophic discussion suggests that only God can fulfill the definition of true kingship, his use of the scriptures suggests that the only true king is Christ—that complete

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kingship is not possible for any human being who is not also divine. Since for Aquinas Christ’s rule is not direct but entrusted to the Church, Cain argues that De Regno concerns the rule of the Church as much as it concerns the king of Cyprus. However, Cain concludes that although the Church, in Aquinas’s view, may by right rule over earthly kings in spiritual matters, in so doing it must leave a near absolute space for prudence—which may require human limits on earthly kings—to rule in the affairs of politics, just as the king must refrain from attempting to rule over spiritual matters. In chapter eight, Jeremy Seth Geddert observes that scholars credit Hugo Grotius with inventing modern natural rights and making modern Europe possible by relegating virtue to the private sphere and thus liberating politics from questions of the soul. Yet, Geddert argues that although Grotius does provide a foundation for a basic set of secular natural rights, in addition to these he frequently speaks of a “wider” virtue. Indeed, Grotius, according to Geddert, subtly insinuates that the maintenance of natural rights actually depends on this wider virtue. This reveals a recognition on Grotius’ part that virtue is not so much a modern doctrine as it is a classical vision or intuition of the Good. Moreover, the highest realm of human virtue is now free from imposition by a political realm whose rules are typically formulated by the many, as Socrates knew all too well. In sum, Geddert argues that Grotius develops individual rights in order to cultivate a minimum level of virtue in the mass populace now invited to participate in modern politics, while simultaneously preserving the possibility of a nondogmatic wider virtue. This ethical distinction taken from the Stoics, Geddert argues, separates the rules of the many and the virtue of the few. Through this distinction, Grotius employs his classical European heritage to shape a modern Europe true to its roots. Lee Ward, in chapter nine, suggests that Thomas Hobbes’s theory of sovereign authorization can illuminate important aspects of both the relation of liberalism and nationalism, and the “legitimate border” issue that troubles critics of democratic theory such as Abizadeh. Ward argues that while Hobbes obviously did not speak about the version of nationalism familiar historically from the 19th to the 20th centuries, his treatment of sovereign authorization, according to which every individual subject authorizes the sovereign to represent and act on his or her behalf, supplies an alternative to the standard nationalist recourse to myth about political founding and identity. The concept of representation is the pivotal link between liberalism and nationalism, and Hobbes practically invented the modern idea of representation in his theory of sovereign authorization. The central feature of Hobbes’s idea of political founding is the doctrine of

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the legal personality of the state, which stipulates that authorization is both a constitutive act through which the sovereign is produced, and simultaneously the moral referent by which individuals understand their political obligation. Ward argues that Hobbes’s account of political founding supplies an alternative, or corrective, to nationalist myths that require recurring reexamination and affirmation of the legitimacy of the state. Hobbes’s theory of sovereign authorization, according to Ward, also speaks to the legitimate border problem. Hobbes’s account of sovereign authorization lays out a process by which outsiders can become insiders, but one that justifies borders in a manner not dependent on pre-political grounds of legitimacy or the consent of outsiders. Part Three reconsiders classical rationalism in the works of Montesquieu and other Enlightenment republicans in Europe and America. In chapter ten, Andrew Bibby explores the major alternatives to Socratic rationalism by way of an examination of Montesquieu's philosophy of liberalism. While few scholars would deny the significance of Montesquieu's contribution to modern liberal political thought, according to Bibby the question of Montesquieu's commitment to modern rationalism—as the only alternative to classical rationalism—is still very much open to debate. Most scholars view Montesquieu's great work, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) as—in some form—a repudiation of classical natural right. Beyond this agreement, however, scholars still very much disagree on what exactly Montesquieu has offered as a substitute. Many have drawn close comparisons to Machiavelli and Hobbes's version of modern natural right. Others have linked Montesquieu to Rousseau, and the historicist tradition—an interpretation, which if true, would stand as an indictment against Montesquieu, that is, as himself contributing to the corrosion or "crisis" of modern natural right philosophy and the abandonment of rationalism, which followed. Bibby argues that Montesquieu's liberalism is best understood as a critique of early modern liberalism from within. Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws is profitably viewed as the last major attempt to revise Lockean liberalism without collapsing into relativism. In this sense, Bibby claims that Montesquieu offers a serious and defensible alternative to classical rationalism. For Bibby, Montesquieu's liberal political philosophy has these two added virtues: it lends itself to humor and friendship; and it not only encourages a comparison to classical rationalism, but requires a serious study of it. Timothy W. Burns, in chapter eleven, analyzes the debate between John Adams and the French political economist Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune (1727-1781). According to Burns Turgot was a champion of what we today call classical liberal economics and classical

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liberalism. In 1781 he wrote a letter to the English champion of American independence, Dr. Price, responding to Price’s Additional Observations on Civil Liberty (London: 1777). The letter criticized the 13 American states for slavishly following the British in having different branches of government, with checks and balances on these class-based branches. The letter, Burns claims, was fateful, in that it provoked an extended response from John Adams, published as Defense of the Constitutions of the United States in 1786-87, a response that became an important source of understanding the branches of government in what was soon to be proposed as the new United States Constitution. Adams sought to demonstrate that, contrary to Turgot’s claim, three natural classes, manifested throughout human history and not only in England, are reflected in the constitutions of the American states. But the dispute between Adams and Turgot turns on an understanding of the new science of government and the new understanding of human beings on which it rests. Burns argues that Adams’ response to Turgot missed the radical nature of the enlightened, commercial republic Turgot sketches—its attempt to wipe out deep longings that give rise both to political ambition and religious devotion—and that the result was Adams’ misleading of the Anti-Federalists in the debate over ratification of the U.S. constitution, against Federalists and others (like Jefferson) who understood the enlightenment and the new, tri-partite representative government much more along the lines of Turgot. Burns concludes with brief reflections on the subsequent state of this political-intellectual drama, in the works of Rousseau, Constant, and postmodernism. Part Four explores contemporary reflections on the relation of classical rationalism to modern democracy, economics, and education. In chapter twelve, Kevin M. Cherry limns the works of Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon for a “politically rational” way of thinking about political polarization and the resultant divisions within contemporary Christian contexts, focusing on each author’s Walgreen lectures at the University of Chicago. Maritain’s lectures, given in December 1949, became Man and the State (originally published in 1951); Simon’s, given in the spring of 1948, became Philosophy of Democratic Government (also 1951). In both works, Cherry argues, the authors draw on “classically rational” sources, primarily Thomas Aquinas, for their thinking about pluralism, and acknowledge especially an Aristotelian influence. Through their adaptation of these sources to democracy understood as dependent on the pluralism that arises out of particular interests and differing religious and philosophic beliefs, their work, according to Cherry, is still helpful in thinking about contemporary political life.

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David Lewis Schaefer, in chapter thirteen, critiques Thomas Piketty’s argument in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (CITC) that the perpetuation of democracy in developed Western nations is threatened by the restoration of a new oligarchy based on inherited wealth, to the point of rivaling the landed aristocracy he portrays as characteristic of nineteenth-century France. To address this threat, according to Schaefer, Piketty proposes a progressive global tax on capital to be collected and the proceeds of which to be administered by a European budgetary parliament whose reach would not only extend throughout Europe but also, ultimately, across the planet. While most critical discussion of Piketty’s argument, both positive and negative, has focused on the economic evidence Piketty proffers to demonstrate the threat of a new oligarchy, Schaefer argues that the greater significance of CITC lies in its disparagement, in the name of a professed determination to “bet everything on democracy,” of the actual practice of self-government; its depreciation of the qualities of citizen character that self-government presupposes; and its denial of the liberal understanding of the purpose of such government as the securing of individual rights or “negative” liberties such as life, liberty, and property. In chapter fourteen, Emma Planinc returns to Thomas Pangle’s Ennobling of Democracy, first published in 1992, and discovers a dual educational program at work. According to Planinc, Pangle advocates, on the one hand, what he believes is the politically necessary removal of postmodernism from the minds of loyal citizens, and on the other, the private but philosophically challenging task of making good students in fact more postmodern insofar as they ought to be compelled to question the given and principled foundations of their lives. Thus, for Planinc, the driving thesis of Pangle’s book is that postmodern thought is not wrong, but dangerous, and that its spokespersons are inadequate in not being sufficiently Socratic, attempting to perform an enlightening mass education on those who would be better suited to a loyal, solid, and principled mode of civic existence. Pangle thus calls for the reinvigoration of the belief in natural rights or natural dignity as providing the fixed standard for human existence and political communities. Planinc argues, however, that we are forced to confront a turn that has developed since the publication of Ennobling: the reinvigoration of philosophical argumentation toward an embrace of a natural standard, but one that does not privilege the human or any conception of “rationalism”; indeed, for Planinc, the idea that nature should provide a standard may lead us further down the path of relativistic ambiguity prophesied by Pangle.

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Naomi Couto, in chapter fifteen, like Planinc, addresses contemporary education. Couto claims that the market approach to education will threaten critical thinking skills that are essential to discussions of freedom and justice in a democratic society. Tensions between education as “functional” and education as “critical thinking” informs Couto’s discussion on what vision animates education, with both sides of the debate arguing that they produce a desirable kind of person and society. Critiquing the logic inherent in functional models, Couto argues that promoting the moral and ethical dimensions of education in the hopes of giving rise to political citizens rather than corporate employees is a responsibility we have to ourselves, our communities and our society. To aid in this project Couto develops what she calls an “ethos” of ancient and modern thought that concerns itself with the nature and purpose of public education as part of culture, and how it perceives itself in the realms of past and present narratives.

References Bottici, Chiara. 2007. A Philosophy of Political Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Damasio, Antonio R. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books. McGrane, David, and Hibbert, Neil eds. (forthcoming). Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. —. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pangle, Thomas L. 2003. Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sokolon, Marlene K. 2006. Political Emotions: Aristotle and the Symphony of Reason and Emotion. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Ward, Ann ed. 2007. Socrates: Reason or Unreason as the Foundation of European Identity. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Notes 1

Thomas L. Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 11. 2 Pangle, Political Philosophy, 7. 3 Chiara Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 125. 4 Bottici, Political Myth, 185, 196. 5 Bottici, Political Myth, 159.

PART ONE: HISTORIC, POETIC, AND PHILOSOPHIC GROUNDS OF CLASSICAL RATIONALISM IN ANCIENT THOUGHT

CHAPTER TWO A MORE SUITABLE STORY: HERODOTUS’ HELEN AND THE POETIC ORIGINS OF THE HELLENES LINDSAY MAHON RATHNAM

In his Histories, Herodotus claims that Hellenic piety is a derivation from the Egyptian (2.43, 44, 49, 50, 52).1 Yet in bringing the Egyptian gods to Greece, the Hellenic poets - Melampus, Homer, and Hesiodtransformed them. Herodotus is explicit about the relative recentness of their introduction, and the key role played by the poets in shaping the Greek pantheon: But whence each of these gods came into existence, or whether hey were for ever, and what kind of shape they had were not known until the day before yesterday… for I believe that Homer and Hesiod were four hundred years before my time- and no more than that. It is they who created for the Greeks their theogony… (2.53).

The character of this transmission becomes clearer through Herodotus’ exegesis of the story of Helen in Egypt, which reveals the great poet’s complex relationship with Egyptian sources.2 This takes place through an extended treatment of the events of the Trojan war, told from the Egyptian perspective.3 In his treatment of Helen’s excursion in Egypt, Herodotus allows us to see the scaffolding at work in Homer’s renovation of the Egyptian pantheon. 4 By clarifying how- and why- Homer reshaped the Egyptian gods, Herodotus brings out what is distinctive about the Hellenes. Homer transformed gods that circumscribe human action into those that support it. In his meditations on Homer, Herodotus thus reveals the power of narrative to sustain flourishing communities and uphold human agency. After earlier detailing the land, culture, and conventions of Egypt, Herodotus turns to a chronicle of its history. In this, he alerts his audience

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to a shift in his methods: “So far it is my eyes, my judgment, and my searching that speaks these words to you; from this on, it is the accounts of the Egyptians that I will tell to you as I heard them, though there will be, as a supplement to them, what I have seen myself” (2.99).5 These Egyptian stories will be filtered through Herodotus’ active intervention, arranging, supplementing, and commenting upon the work of the Egyptian chroniclers.6 This interplay should be kept in mind when we encounter ‘intersectional’ moments- figures or stories who originate in Egypt but also dwell within the landscape of Greek myth. 7 Egyptian stories allow Herodotus to ‘make strange’ the Greeks. Midway through his chronicle of Egyptian history, one such figure appears: Proteus, but one far different from that familiar to the Greeks from the Odyssey. There, Proteus was a shape-shifting sea-god, a divinebeing that could assume whatever form he willed. Here, Proteus is emphatically mortal, and of one (human) form; he is simply a ‘man of Memphis” (2.112), one of a long line of Egyptian kings (2.4, 2.99-2.100, 2.143-144). In comparison with the multi-shaped splendour of the Homeric Proteus, the mere mortality of the Egyptian king seems dull and flat.8 As he did with the Persian chroniclers in the opening of the work, Herodotus signals that he is operating in a different, prosaic register than that of the Greek poets. The stories of others afford the distance by which he can deflate the stuff of myth. But although Proteus is merely mortal, the Egyptians seem to regard another Homeric figure as divine. In the precinct of Proteus Herodotus remarks on the shrine dedicated to the Foreign Aphrodite: “My guess is that this shrine is the shrine of Helen, daughter of Tyndareus.” (2.112). Herodotus notes the strangeness of this: “Of all the other temples of Aphrodite, not one is called after the goddess as ‘foreign’.” (2.112). In light of everything Herodotus has earlier related of the Egyptians, this appears deeply bizarre. Not only do they reject foreign ways and cleave to those of their ancestors (2.79), but they are particularly cold to the beauty of the body, preferring to be clean rather than fair-seeming (2.37). They are thus cold to humanity itself.9 Of all peoples, then, they are the least likely to be moved to worship the beauty of a human woman, and it is nigh impossible that they should deem a beautiful human divine. It is possible that Herodotus’ judgment is questionable; perhaps he has reverted to a typically Hellenic chauvinism, the kind he lambasted earlier as “showing no manner of thought” (2.45) for its ignorance of the Egyptians and its over-evaluation of human heroes. The Greeks might have made a goddess out of a beautiful woman, but such behaviour seems entirely uncharacteristic of the Egyptians.

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Herodotus is clear that he is ‘guessing’ here; he cannot ascertain the facts for certain. But yet by hazarding this guess- when he was not compelled by the facts, or by what the Egyptians have said- Herodotus has highlighted just how amazingly, divinely beautiful Helen is. Indeed, the fact of Helen’s beauty, and how it is read and experienced by the various peoples she encounters, will prove key to the unfolding of the narrative Herodotus is constructing. Since it is a beauty that cannot be experienced firsthand, for we cannot see Helen but rather hear about her, we face the problem that Herodotus dramatised earlier in the Histories through the story of Candaules: how to credit the report of beauty without seeing it ourselves (1.8). Candaules knew that the eyes are superior judges to the ears, and so forced the unwilling Gyges to witness the beauty of his queen. Herodotus cannot likewise force his audience, and so therefore must suggest her beauty by reporting its effects, by showing her beauty at work. The first example of this shows just how powerful and transformative it must have been: that the Egyptians, they for whom the human is so infinitely below and separate from the divine,10 were so struck by Helen as to treat this mere human being as a goddess underscores the extremity of her beauty- and the profundity of its effect. Moreover, that Helen’s human beauty could have such an effect on the Egyptians shows that convention’s rule is capable of being disrupted; an extraordinary experience can jostle forth unconventional reactions. The disruptive effects of Helen’s beauty on those Egyptians who behold her suggest the ways in which the body resists perfect and total acculturation. In this, Helen’s effects on the Egyptians echo the earlier experience of the Egyptian Deserters (2.30). These Deserters, having been left on duty without relief for far too long, abandoned their post. When the Egyptian king Psammetichus urged them to return to Egypt, citing their traditions and their families, their spokesman showed his genitals and claimed “wherever I have this, I will have wives and children.” The conventions of the Egyptians insist that sexuality belongs to the gods; their conventions alienate themselves from their bodies. 11 In denying this, the Deserters cease to be Egyptian. Their experience thus suggests that the body cannot be completely acculturated. Convention cannot entirely silence the body. The Egyptians who beheld Helen are not as radically transformed as the Deserters; they remain Egyptian. Nevertheless, her beauty draws them out of their characteristic conventional categories; the inadequacy of their conventional lenses become, temporarily, imperfectly, apparent, for those conventions could not contain or explain a beauty such as Helen’s. The Egyptians, who regard culture as fate, were led outside of their conventional categories by the human beauty of Helen; those who denied the beauty of

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the body and the humanity of the gods judged a beautiful woman to be a goddess. This shows the powerful ways that the body can motivate action, even ones we might otherwise resist. The Egyptians shun the foreign, but Helen’s beauty leads them to worship a foreign Aphrodite. Her human beauty has led them to transgress the boundaries of their own conventions by attracting them to what is foreign. The human body can therefore show the very conventionality of cultural boundaries, precisely by drawing us to transgress them. Helen may be Greek, but her human beauty resonates with the Egyptians, reminds them that they are not just Egyptian but human, too. Indeed, Helen’s beauty sparks a host of transgressions and boundarycrossings. Most notably, it led Alexander to break the bonds of xeinia by kidnapping her in the first place. If Helen could have such an effect on the Egyptians, the kidnappings and war she inspired might seem less fabulous, more humanly plausible. If this does not make it just to kidnap, and then keep, the divinely beautiful Helen, it might, however, make it understandable. Helen’s beauty leads those who behold her to break rules, behave irrationally, and transcend their cultural horizons. Her beauty destabilizes; for better or for worse, it motivates unexpected and unusual action from those who behold it. Helen’s exceptional beauty, then, both initiates and symbolizes the human capacity for the extraordinary and unexpected. Helen’s beauty is rare yet still humanly possible, and the responses it provokes leads her beholders out of the rote and everyday. Helen reminds us that human nature has within it the capacity for the surprising and unexpected, whether it be rare beauty or unconventional acts. To judge the events of the Trojan War, as Herodotus does in this micro-narrative, we have to attend both to the common and everyday, as the Persian chroniclers did in the version of the war that opened the Histories, and the unusual and unexpected. Still, even if Herodotus’ ‘guess’ about the effects of Helen’s beauty has shed some light on Alexander’s actions, his servants do not credit such excuses. After ‘wrecking winds’ carry Alexander off course to Egypt,12 his servants desert their master and, sitting suppliant at the shrine of Heracles, accuse him of ‘injustice’ toward Menelaus (2.113). Benardete observes the striking fact that the Hellenic or Trojan servants speak of Alexander’s injustice, whereas the Egyptians speak of his impiety.13 This suggests that the Egyptians conceive of human behaviour solely (rather than partially) through the lens of the divine; to be virtuous is to be obedient to the divine, to be vicious is to transgress against it.14 Virtue is only an aspect of piety for the Egyptians. It is what they owe to the gods, not what they owe to themselves or others: not, in other words, what is decent or becoming.

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Even so, although the Hellenes speak of justice and the Egyptians speak of piety, their outrage is shared. Justice and piety here make the same demand. Relevant are Herodotus’ comments earlier in the Egyptian narrative about the relativity of measures: “men who are pinched for land measure by fathoms; those who are less pinched by furlongs; those who have much by parasangs; those who have plenty, by schoeni.” (2.6) Different situations prompt diverse means of measurement, of understanding one’s world. The same actions are here measured by different yardstickspiety and justice. Indeed, there seems to be a common ground for this shared outrage, 15 even though it is differently understood: the sacred importance of hospitality.16 The importance of this becomes clear if we delve into the premises underlying hospitality. Hospitality rests on the recognition that safety is not protected or guaranteed, that both hosts and guests are at risk in their interaction. It also insists that we can overcome this need. If we were powerless to overcome it, hospitality would not be a duty; for something to be a requirement means that it must be possible. Hospitality thus recognizes the vulnerability of others and the power that we have to redress that vulnerability, that- as desiring and greedy human beings, we could exploit others, but that we likewise have the capability to refrain from such exploitation. Such restraint rests on the recognition of both human weakness and of the human power to mitigate that weakness.17 The violation of hospitality exploits the former and fails to uphold the latter. Here, the impious and unseemly collide. Proteus is horrified by Alexander’s crime against hospitality. It is precisely his deep sense of the criminality of Alexander’s actions that makes him refrain from punishing him further: “If I did not think it of the first consequences not to kill any stranger who, under duress of the winds, has come to this land of mine, I would myself have taken vengeance on you on behalf of that Greek” (2.115).18 His lack of anger is yet another manifestation of Egyptian alienation from the human.19 A crime of impiety is, after all, a crime against the god- a god so far removed from the human that identification with the divine is simply impossible. Anger arises when we feel thwarted, even if it is not specifically we ourselves who are thwarted but rather someone or something we identify with, someone that we ‘feel’ with. The Egyptians do not primarily conceive of crime as against human beings, and are separated from their gods; because of this, they never really become enraged.20 Proteus meticulously fulfills his duties as host while redressing a crime against hospitality; he takes Alexander’s stolen goods, including Helen, and gives him three days to leave the

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country (2.115). Yet his meticulous and calm response will also prove to have compounded matters, not alleviated them. Herodotus here interrupts the narrative proper in order to comment upon Homer’s knowledge and methods: “And I think Homer knew the tale, but inasmuch as it was not so suitable for epic poetry as the other, he used the latter and consciously abandoned the one here told.” (2.116). Several things follow from this claim. First, according to Herodotus, Homer himself decides what goes into his epic, and not some muse whispering into his ear.21 Moreover, the decision about what to include is made on the basis of suitability, or seemliness. The Egyptian version was somehow unsuitable for epic poetry; it did not fit Homer’s purposes, the aim or the intention of the work. Yet this indecent story, which was not fitted to Homer’s purposes, is present in Herodotus’ own work. It therefore must suit his. Indeed, raising this very question of suitability must suit Herodotus’ purpose in some way. In raising this question, Herodotus uses Homer against Homer, claiming that Homer “has given proof that he knew the story” (2.116). Herodotus here relies on the authority of Homer in order to subvert that very authority. Yet the consequences of this counter-reading are profound: if Homer’s authority can prove this Egyptian tale, we can toss out the rest of his account of the war with Troy, the basis of that authority in the first place. By proceeding in this way, Herodotus is leading his readers to begin to question Homer’s absolute authority, and this is a delicate task.22 It is worth comparing here the Hellenic relation to Homer to that of the Egyptians to their land. Herodotus uses the same phrase to describe both, characterizing each as contributions made ‘the day before yesterday.’ (2.15; 2. 53). Just as the Egyptians failed to truly grasp their dependence on the land, so too do the Hellenes fail to comprehend the ways in which their distinctiveness is a poetic creation. But the creation of a poet, as opposed to the product of a long-lasting geographical process, is malleable. Homer could have made different poetic choices, towards a differently construed end. Indeed, in raising the question of Homer’s authority, Herodotus draws our attention to Homer’s poem as a thing crafted. Homer consciously used some stories and abandoned others, thus shaping his narrative (which would in turn shape the Greeks.) We are looking at how the sausage gets made, in other words. A completed poem can wash over us, hypnotize us, drawing us in without our being aware of it- the more beautiful the poem, the more fundamentally, unquestionably real it seems. By disenchanting Homer, Herodotus urges that we look back to the process of making, that we think about Homer’s shaping of his material. To do this raises the question of

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the status of Homer’s authority: what it rests on, and what considerations informed Homer’s poetic making. Herodotus here is asking us to begin to think about the origins of Greekness, and ultimately, back again to the nebulous relation between custom and nature. Yet by reflecting on the nature of poetic composition, Herodotus is also drawing attention to his own purposes. 23 Again, the question of suitability is pertinent. If it is to Homer’s purposes to make a beautiful epic poem that enchants our vision of the world, we must ask why it is to Herodotus’ purpose to break that spell. Herodotus here invites us to read him like he reads Homer: asking questions, using our own sight, interpreting. It is thus to Herodotus’ purpose to draw our attention to the choices that he is making as a writer, and to make us aware of authority as something to be investigated, rather than blindly accepted. To this end, it matters what criteria Herodotus uses in his reading of Homer, the standard by which he judges the work. Herodotus evaluates Homer according to his own observation of human things, his autopsis. It is not enough that he can find proof of this Egyptian version of the war in Homer, or that the Egyptians testify to it. What is key is that, based on what he has seen of human things, Herodotus finds it more humanly plausible that the Trojans did not have Helen, because any right thinking people would have turned her over if they had had her (2.120). He uses his understanding of human nature to evaluate what he reads and hears. He thinks for himself rather than trusting to authority.24 It is for this reason that he believes the Egyptian story: “for Priam was not so besotted, nor the rest of his kinsfolk, that they would be willing to risk their own bodies, children, and city so that Alexander should lie with Helen.” (2.120). Herodotus escalates the Persian view presented at the beginning of the Histories. There, the Persians held that it was foolish to have gone to war over a woman, but here Herodotus suggests that it is so absurd that it is not even credible. If it is absurd for a whole people to sacrifice itself for the supremely common desire that men have to bed women, the Achaeans’ persistence in going to war for the return of that woman appears inexplicable. With this, Herodotus has returned to another dimension of the body and its beauty, its carnal and appetitive side, evident in Alexander’s desire to ‘lie with’ Helen. This renders it something common and banal. Relevant here is his earlier proclaimed distaste for the view that men are much the same as beasts, voiced in his discussion of the shared Hellenic and Egyptian prohibition on temple fornication (2.64). Carnal appetite is a base reason to go to war; if human beings can restrain themselves from fornicating in temples, surely they could have restrained themselves in this great matter.

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Yet all the sources agree that the Achaeans waged this war, and indeed, Herodotus never doubts that the Achaeans did go to war for Helen- only that the Trojans would put up such a fight rather than give her back. To make sense of this, it is worth remembering that, as Herodotus informed us at the beginning of this narrative, the Egyptians, so disinclined to value the human, worshipped the human Helen as a goddess (2.112). If she could have such a disruptive effect on the customs and practices of one people, it becomes less altogether unbelievable that she could inspire irrationality in others- that the Achaeans would go to war over her, and the Trojans would refuse to hand her over. This brings forth another aspect of the appreciation of beauty: its humanity, as well as its animality. 25 Beauty is an aspect of human grandeur, a kind of excellence that the Greeks are so sensitive to. Appreciation of this beauty stems from pride in the human; our species appears more dignified because it can produce such a creature as Helen (with a little help from Zeus). In one light, a human being is just another beast, and a beautiful woman is nothing to get too excited over- but in another, a divinely beautiful human being supports belief in the beauty of mankind. Herodotus here appears to ‘uglify’ Helen, just as he has been uglifying Homer by disenchanting epic poetry. Yet in uglifying Helen, he has also urged us to think critically about the power of beauty, to recognize and reflect on its power, rather than simply become entranced by it. To do this, we have to see both sides of it: its grace and its banality. Neither tells the full story. Helen’s beauty led the Egyptians - however briefly - out of their cultural isolation. It led the Hellenes to war, and the Trojans to their destruction. Beauty can provoke and uphold human agency, for both good and ill. It can prompt grand deeds, or occasion disaster. Herodotus’ treatment of Helen reminds us of the power of this beauty, its creative and destructive aspects. To grasp it in its entirety, the ugly and the beautiful must somehow be brought together. Something similar occurs with his ‘uglification’ of Homer. Until this point, Herodotus’s version appears closer to the Persian and the Egyptian accounts of the Trojan War: the Greek gods are nowhere to be found. Yet the gods give the tale scope, grandeur and dignity- without them we have left only senseless, irrational violence on an unbearable scale. The only meaning we can draw from the tale is that human beings are cruel and foolish. The Greeks fail to investigate the Trojans’ claims that they do not have Helen,26 and because of their laxity destroy an entire city (2.118). Even the scrupulous Proteus comes off as paltry and powerless, since his attempt to act well made the whole mess worse: if the Trojans had had Helen, they would have handed her over, thus avoiding all that bloodshed

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and destruction. Instead, the innocent Trojans suffer for the mistakes of others. Such foolishness and ineptitude has the effect of lowering our estimation of all involved. This lowering of the mythic characters, however, effectively lowers our estimation of humanity as such; it is difficult to feel pride in our humanity after having witnessed such meaningless violence. 27 Herodotus has made our species out to be repugnant lot. Yet in the midst of this secular tale, the gods suddenly re-emerge: “No, the Trojans did not have Helen to give back, and, when they spoke the truth, the Greeks did not believe them; and the reason of this, if I may declare my opinion, was that the Divine was laying his plans that, as the Trojans perished in utter destruction, they might make this thing manifest to all the world: that for great wrongdoings, great also are the punishments from the gods.” (2.120) Yet this exemplary punishment makes no sense.28 As the Trojans (according to Herodotus) protest: “It would be very unjust…. that we should be punished for what the Egyptian king Proteus possesses” (2.118). The whole city -its men, women, and children- was destroyed for the crime of just one of its citizens, a crime that was not in their power to redress. The Trojans thus unjustly became the example of divine justice at work; without any great criminality on their part, they became a lesson to deter all future criminals. Noting this tension, Benardete observes that “By becoming an example, the destruction of Troy can no longer be regarded as itself either merited or unmerited punishment. It becomes the symbol of justice without itself being just. It loses its surface meaning as it gains significance.” 29 By so obviously making Troy the unjust example of justice at work, Herodotus has prodded us to think about what it is to make an example out of something. He thereby draws our attention to the political or salutary effects of justice, rather than its intrinsic worth. For in an act of exemplary justice, the intended beneficiary of the example is not the perpetrators of the crime(s), but its audience, those who witness the example, not the person or people being made into an example. Generally speaking, the application of justice must have something to do with giving what is due, and so it has to do with the merits or faults of the implicated party. But an example is intended to display a lesson. The internal merits of the case disappear. What counts is the effect, the spectacle of it all. By asking us to think about the effects of Homer’s version, Herodotuswho has so heavily foregrounded poetic choice and shaping in this sectionhas also asked us to think about the effects of his. These are not quite so immediately and obviously salutary, as obviously ‘just’, as the lesson that Homer (according to Herodotus) was teaching. Yet this might be key to

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Herodotus’ own purposes. As Benardete notes, “Homer’s version of the Trojan war makes the gods just and men foolish..... the Egyptian version, on the other hand, makes the gods unjust and men excessively distrustful of one another.”30 Herodotus’ version at first glance seems to be some sort of blend between the two, for human ineptitude and pettiness abounds, but so too does divine action. The gods, in delivering this unjust justice upon Troy, appear either to be confused or malicious. To disentangle this apparent puzzle, it is necessary to examine the components of Herodotus’ mixture. Homer’s gods care about human affairs and act rightly and efficiently within them. The Egyptian version of this tale, however, is more dispiriting, if more plausible. As Benardete observes, “[t]he Greek understanding of the gods entails that justice be rewarded with happiness and injustice punished with misery, but the Egyptians whose gods are fundamentally mysterious, avoid the obvious difficulty of maintaining such a view by making human misery and happiness wholly independent of justice and injustice. The rules of piety are to be followed for the sake of piety itself...”31 Homer’s version is more politically salutary: the world makes sense, the good shall prosper, because the gods care. This view inspires more confidence in the world and gives more support to right action, but when this belief falters - as it will, for any clear-eyed encounter with the world will notice the ‘obvious difficulties’ with this - this ‘sunny’ view loses its salutary effects. Either complex theological acrobatics are required to account for it, or we blind ourselves to human suffering, or we become disillusioned with this belief and therefore listless in our practice of justice. We must therefore ask if the Egyptian view is superior, insofar as it is more theologically coherent and less prone to the ‘obvious difficulties’ attendant on a belief in divine justice. Here it is key to remember that within the Egyptian view, the human world and the divine are so completely separated that human beings are without recourse. Piety does not earn the favour of the gods, nor does impiety invite their anger: Herodotus makes this clear through the contrasting fates of the impious Egyptian king Cheops and his pious son Mycerinus (2.124-133). Mycerinus strove to act justly in all he did; despite this, he suffered one misfortune after another. Because of this, he sent a “reproachful message” to the god: “his blame on the god… was that his father and grandfather had shut up the temples and regarded the gods not at all, and furthermore, they had murdered men, yet they had lived a long, long time. He himself had been pious, and so now he was to die so quickly!” (2.133). The oracle replied that “it was just because of this that his life was shortened. For he had not, said the message, done what was fated. Fate was that Egypt

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should be afflicted for one hundred and fifty years…” (2.133.) The Egyptian gods do not reward piety; the Egyptians cannot rely on them for support. Yet the Egyptians cannot rely on themselves either, for the very depth and mysteriousness of these gods leave no room for human pride, or for the promise of a particularly human happiness. The human world is completely submerged in a divinity one can neither count on nor understand. The Egyptians owe the duty of piety to these inscrutable beings, but this piety, as Benardete observes, “follows its own rules.”32 These rules, like the gods they stem from, are inscrutable. No inquiry will reveal them further, and there is no promise that these rules promote or speak to human happiness or have anything to do with a human nature. These rules simply are and must be, just as they have always been. It is clear, then, that the Egyptian view is not politically superior. Yet Herodotus has blended the Egyptian and the Hellenic, and so his Egyptianizing tendency must suit his purposes in some way, as do the selfconsciously Hellenic flourishes he deploys. Herodotus’s story is a combination. It is Hellenic in that it finds sense- and thus beauty- in what would otherwise be ugly and senseless. But he Egyptianizes in leaving alive this sense of the ‘obvious difficulty’ of viewing the world as organized by a divine justice that upholds the good and punishes the unjust. It is precisely this tension that entices his readers to think about these questions, to use their own autopsis, their judgment of human things, in order to understand these stories that the Greeks tell about the world. The tension between this ugly story and the beautiful moral affixed to it, so apparently clumsily, reveals the importance of the notion of divine care as a political force in the human world, precisely because of its propensity towards the senseless, the cruel, and the excessive. If “for great wrongdoings, great also are the punishments,” (2.120) divine support for justice makes its practice more humanly possible. Herodotus’ treatment of Homer thus invites his audience to use the same scrutiny when reading the rest of the Histories. Homer’s work is, at its simplest level, about a war between the Hellenes and the barbarians. So too is Herodotus’. 33 If we compare like to like, Herodotus’s divine turnabout signals that his treatment of the war will contain just such a conscious beautification, sitting at times purposefully and uncomfortably close to his desire to investigate and ferret out the truth of the matter. Herodotus has revealed just how recent of an invention Hellenic deities are- and just how much their specifically Hellenic character owes to poetic shaping, a shaping that made the distant near, the inscrutable transparent, and the inhuman something much more humane. By underlining the role of poetic shaping in making and re-making these gods, Herodotus has

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invited us to take these gods a little (or a lot) less seriously. However, precisely when it matters, precisely when matters of justice and human pride are at stake, these gods are treated with the appearance of piety. Herodotus then might include all of these Homeric flourishes, not insofar as they are true or real aspects of the war, or as a stylistic tic he picked up from years of passively marinating in Homer, but insofar as they accomplish something necessary for a flourishing politics. Yet these beautiful stories are not sufficient or perfect in themselves; they must be corrected, as Herodotus’ correction of Homer has demonstrated. Difficulties flow from such beautiful stories, particularly those ‘stupidities’ particular to the Greeks (cf. 2.45). The Greek view of the world, while more beautiful for its poetic dimension, might be for the same reason more fragile. Herodotus therefore must strengthen the Homeric account, by offering this philosophical supplement. His version of the Trojan war upholds while complicating the salutary effects of Homer’s. In this, he teaches his audience the political value of a suitable story. Narratives are a powerful thing; they can persuade and inspire, or thwart and depress. The story Homer tells supports justice; the story told by Herodotus reminds us of the necessity of such stories, the justice of supporting justice. In urging the Greeks to think through the narrative foundations of their community, he reminds us of the importance of attending to ours. Without care, the narratives that sustain us can languish. As Herodotus’ Egypt shows, fatalism awaits communities without a suitable story.

Works Cited Austin, Norman. Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Benardete, Seth. Herodotean Inquiries. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009. Burian, Peter. Euripides: Helen. Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2007 Cartledge, Paul and Greenwood, Emily. “Herodotus as a Critic: Truth, Fiction, Polarity,’ 351-71. In Brill’s Companion to Herodotus. ed. Mathieu de Bakker, Irene de Jong, and Hans Van Wees. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2002 Dale, A.M. Euripides: Helen. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. de Bakker, Mathieu . “Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry and Storytelling”. In Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus, ed. Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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De Jong, Irene . “The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint. in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus. ed. Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Dewald, Carolyn. ‘ “I didn’t give my own genealogy”: Herodotus and the authorial persona’, in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, ed. Mathieu de Bakker, Irene de Jong, and Hans Van. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2002. Gray, Vivienne. “Herodotus 5.55-69: Structure and Significance (5.5569)’, 202-205, in Reading Herodotus: A Study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories. ed. Elizabeth Irwinand Emily Greenwood. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Grethlein, Jonas. The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century BCE. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Heubeck, Alfred., West, Stephanie, and Hainsworth, J.B.. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey: Volume 1, Introduction and Books I-VIII. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1988. Lateiner, Donald. The Historical Method of Herodotus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. Lloyd, A.B., Herodotus: Book II: Commentary 99-182. Leiden: Brill, 1988 Said, Suzanne. ‘Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War’. in Myth, Truth and Narrative in Herodotus. ed. Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Thomas, Rosalind. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Thompson, Norma. Herodotus and the Origins of Political Community: Arion’s Leap. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Ward, Ann. Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008. Waters, Kenneth H., Herodotos the Historian: His Problems, Methods and Originality. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985 Vandiver, Elizabeth. “ ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus”. in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus. ed. Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012

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Notes 1

See Rosalind Thomas Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion. (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2000) chapter 9. (fix) also Vivienne Gray, “Herodotus 5.55-69: Structure and Significance.” in Reading Herodotus: A study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories. ed. Elizabeth Irwin and Emily Greenwood (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.) 212. I would further clarify that Herodotus highlights the transformation as much as the debt; intercultural exchange is a dynamic thing. 2 While many assume Stesichorus to be the source of Herodotus’ version of the tale (A.M. Dale, Euripides: Helen. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). xix; Alfred Heubeck, Stephanie West, and J.B. Hanisworth, A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey: Volume One: Introduction and Books I-VIII; Peter Burian, Euripides: Helen (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2007) 7. Jonas Grethlein, The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory, and History in the Fifth Century BCE (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 153 rightly notes that Herodotus is engaged in polemic with Homer, not Stesichorus. My reading is concerned with how Herodotus chooses to present his reading, and so focuses on Herodotus’ relationship to Homer. 3 The story is originally Egyptian, but as De Jong has argued, it “reveals the hand of Herodotus everywhere.” Irene De Jong, “The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint,” in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus. ed. Baragwanath and Bakker. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 141 4 Paul Cartledge and Emily Greenwood, “Herodotus as a Critic: Truth, Fiction, Polarity,” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2002) contend here that Herodotus is “competing with the allure of epic, while paying lip service to the standards of rigorous inquiry…” I assert, rather, that he is investigating epic- and the rigour of his inquiry lies in his investigation of its political or salutary effects 5 Much of the scholarship on the Proteus story focuses on its relationship to the Greek sources; most obviously Homer, but also Hesiod, Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and Stesichorus: see, inter alia, A,B. Lloyd, Herodotus Book II: Commentary 99182. (Leiden: Brill, 1988) 46-8; Norman Austin, Helen of Troy and her Shameless Phantom, (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1994) 118-36. Herodotus however attributes this story to the Egyptians. Although scholarship is divided on how ‘Egyptian’ this story is (see de Jong, “Herodotus’ Fingerprint” 128-129 for a good summary of the debate), it is worth remembering that Herodotus presents this part of the narrative as ‘edited Egyptian’: stories told by the Egyptians with a Herodotean supplement. De Jong helpfully attends to the story ‘synchronically’, as it appears in the text, in an effort to suss out Herodotus’ ‘fingerprint’ (129). 6 Carolyn Dewald , “I didn’t give my own genealogy’: Herodotus and the authorial persona,” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus.

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Norma Thompson, Herodotus and the Origins of Political Community: Arion’s Leap, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 64- “Herodotus recognizes his own and his audience’s involvement with the characters in his history, establishes points of contact with them, and trusts this contact to guide him in his depictions. His audience is challenged to judge him in this endeavour in a way that cannot hold for Homer or Hesiod…” 8 Matthieu de Bakker, “Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry, and Storytelling.” in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)110 notes that, of all the mythical figures that Herodotus historicizes, none “is so far removed from his mythological counterpart as Proteus” 9 Ann Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008) 31 astutely notes that their “contempt for the body… means contempt for the human.’ 10 Thompson, Herodotus and the Origins of Political Community, 109; Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire, 22-42 11 Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire, 35-38 12 Note that in the Egyptian story, there is no hint that these wrecking winds are a punishment, sent by some irked deity to punish Alexander. 13 Seth Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009) 47 14 Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire, 39-40 15 de Bakker “Herodotus’ Proteus”, 117 suggests that Herodotus depicts xeinia as yet another religious observance of Egyptian origin. While I agree with de Bakker that Proteus is far more scrupulous than either the Trojans or the Hellenes (especially considering Menelaus’ later actions in Egypt), all exhibit an awareness of the imperative of hospitality, whether or not they uphold it. 16 De Jong “Herodotus’ Fingerprint” 135 notes that, in this logos, Menelaus is five times referred to as ‘host’ (xeinos) rather than being named, which heightens the emphasis on the violation of hospitality. Elizabeth Vandiver, “ ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus”. in Myth Truth and Narrative in Herodotus. ed. Baragwanath and de Bakker. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 148-149 likewise notes the way Herodotus foregrounds its importance. 17 In this light, then, we can better evaluate two of Herodotus’ most explicit positive judgments; one concerning a law that is the ‘wisest’ (1.196), and the other, a man who was ‘just… through and through’ (3.148). Both recognize that we are vulnerable (less beautiful, less steadfast than we might wish) but that we can construct a way to redress those weaknesses. In the Babylonians’ ‘wisest’ law, the proceeds raised by the marriages of the most beautiful women is used to fund the marriages of the least attractive; in this way, the effects of the inequality of beauty are redressed by the redistribution of funds (1.196). This law rests on the recognition of preferential treatment of the beautiful, but also the importance, for the community as a whole, of addressing that imbalance by insuring that each

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woman has a space reserved for her- that no woman is left without the security of marriage. As for the man who was ‘just through and through’, Kleomenes - he demonstrates his justice by recognizing the power of an unjust temptation, and removing it (3.148). Both of these instances involve the recognition that we are vulnerable (less beautiful, less steadfast than we might wish) but that we can construct a way to redress those weaknesses. 18 for this, de Bakker “Herodotus’ Proteus” 121 identifies Proteus as “one of the most righteous of Herodotus’ enquiring kings”. 19 Amongst the Persians it is almost typical to meet (apparently) great transgressions with a great wrath- and so it becomes customary for this wrath to itself violate custom. (And, as the subject here is the events of the Trojan war, we might note that wrath was a notable feature of a certain Achaean as well.) In contrast, the Egyptians do not seem to lose their cool - witness, for example, the response of the priests of Apis to the great outrage wrought by Cambyses- the murder of a god, perhaps the most flagrant violation of piety possible (3.29). 20 They are said to ‘hate’ Menelaos for his sacrifice of two children- yet hatred and rage are different. Indeed, there is a further possibility: that their hatred of Menelaos for sacrificing two native children is not because of the harm done to the Egyptians and their children, but is rather due to the impiety of such a sacrifice. 21 Although many emphasize that Herodotus is questioning the reliability of Homer here: Donald Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) 99, Austin, Helen of Troy,118-22, I instead join de Jong “Herodotus’ Fingerprint” 133 in foregrounding the way in which this exegesis highlights Homer’s historiographic and poetic activity 22 We might compare Herodotus’ reading of Homer to Machiavelli’s reading of the Bible- both exploit tensions in their authoritative texts, and in so doing, both writers teach us how to read their own books. 23 de Bakker “Herodotus’ Proteus” 125: “Just as the writer of an epic had the liberty to choose from various versions the one that was most suitable, so Herodotus took the liberty to employ narrative artistry - nowadays associated with fiction -to support his authority.” In my reading, however, Herodotus’ invocation of Homer both bolsters his authority and troubles it. Herodotus shows the care and intention that have gone into his work - but also encourages his audience to think think critically about the narrative he constructs. 24 Suzanne Said, “Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War,” in Myth Truth and Narrative in Herodotus, ed Baragwanath and de Bakker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 92 notes that Herodotus argues from verisimilitude here. 25 Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire, 32 26 de Jong “Herodotus’ Fingerprint” 138 27 Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries, 47-48 28 Despite this, this is often read as Herodotus simply returning to the orthodox Homeric view, e.g. Kenneth H. Waters, Herodotos the Historian: His Problems, Methods, and Originality. (London and Sydney: Croom Helms, 1985) 101, and

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Vandiver, “Strangers are from Zeus,” 150-151. Others more convincingly see this is as a revision of Homer (De Jong, “Herodotus’ Fingerprint”). I emphasize the ways that Herodotus’ revision of Homer is purposefully problematic. 29 Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries, 48 30 Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries, 47 31 Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries, 48 32 Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries, 47 33 Said “The ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War” 97: Herodotus employs the Trojan War “as a means of deepening his audience’s understanding of the more contemporary events that are the subject of the Histories.”

CHAPTER THREE A NATURALLY DISASTROUS WAR: NATURE, POLITICS, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THUCYDIDES’ HISTORY BERNARD J. DOBSKI

Thucydides’ History1 has long been recognized as a repository of political wisdom. Over the last six decades, scholars have increasingly drawn Thucydides’ political insights into the orbit of classical philosophy, leading some to suggest that his History points to a life of theoretical contemplation, and not political action, as the genuine embodiment of natural right (Strauss, 1963; Bruell, 1974; Connor, 1984; Orwin, 1994). And yet, despite an increased scholarly emphasis on natural right within Thucydides’ text, sustained, focused treatments of nature within the History -- which would include its treatment of natural phenomena -- are noticeably missing from the scholarly landscape (though see Proietti, 1992 and Foster, 2009). At first glance, this absence shouldn’t trouble the reader. After all, the History is about a surpassingly great war waged by the two greatest cities of ancient Greece; it is not a work of natural science. But Thucydides explicitly links natural disasters to the suffering endured during the war and thus to his claim for the war’s surpassing greatness (I.23). And because the war’s greatness is crucial to his choice of theme, his handling of those natural disasters that some of the actors in his work consider divine punishments should prove crucial to his theme; that is, to his decision to dedicate his single work to the political and military affairs of classical Greece. And yet, at the same time, Thucydides appears to distinguish his particular handling of his political subject from the conventions that characterize political life. Near the center of his History, he insists that he linked his account of the war to what would appear to be natural phenomena - a material order governed by the regular progression

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of the seasons, and not by oracles and prophets or customs and conventions, informed his historiography (V.20, 26; II.1). Taken together, these statements suggest a complex triangulation between his treatment of politics, nature, and historiography at work in the History. The present essay aims to clarify the nature of this triangulation in an effort to understand how a single work about a single war could reveal the “clear truth” (to saphes) about human affairs (I.20). That understanding may be stated, somewhat broadly, as follows: Thucydides’ historiography operates mimetically because it embodies the very character of the political wisdom that the History seeks to cultivate in its audience. And that wisdom suggests, among other things, that the sharp distinction between a material world governed by fixed, immutable, and objectively knowable laws, on the one hand, and a cosmos governed by gods interested in upholding justice among men, on the other hand, represents a false dichotomy. Thucydides understands events like earthquakes, plagues, volcanoes, famines, and droughts to be the product neither of vengeful gods nor of a nature independent of human making, but of the interplay between what some, following Thucydides’ initial characterization of the war as a “megiste kinesis” (I.1), have called the “forces of motion” and the “forces of rest” (Strauss, 1963, 159). Of course, such claims merely prompt one to inquire into the metaphysical status of such “forces.” Who or what is behind them? The present effort cannot answer these questions, partly because they are beyond its reach and partly because Thucydides himself frustrates any effort to do so. While his work certainly prompts the reader to raise questions about causes or “first things,” the distinctive focus of the History requires the reader to address those questions only on a human and political plane. Redirecting the metaphysical tendency of his reader back towards politics is part of Thucydides’ instruction here. This chapter will therefore limit itself to charting a path of inquiry that one must undertake if one is to understand both the so-called “natural world” in Thucydides’ History and its ability to illuminate, and thereby help the reader understand, the virtues of his presentation of Periclean Athens.

Natural Disasters and Seasons in the History Thucydides’ most well-known statement on natural disasters occurs in his re-statement on the greatness of the war he relates (I.23; cf. I.1-2). According to our author, this war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians was the greatest because it:

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both lasted long and the harm it did to Greece was such as the like in the like space had never been seen before….And those things which concerning former time there went fame of, but in fact rarely confirmed, were now made credible: as earthquakes, general to the greatest part of the world and most violent withal; eclipses of the sun more often than is reported of any former time; great droughts in some places and thereby famine; and that which did none of the least hurt but destroyed also its part, the plague. All these evils entered together with this year…

Thucydides’ insistence here on the greatness of the war he relates stands or falls with the suffering inflicted and endured during it, suffering caused in no small part by the “evils” of the disasters that occurred. While it is clear how earthquakes, famine, and the plague can inflict great suffering, it is less clear, as one commentator observed, how eclipses produce any injury. Unlike the other phenomena listed, eclipses don’t impact our physical environment in a way capable of causing us harm. Put differently, eclipses can only be related to human suffering if they are understood as portents of evils to come, only that is, if they are understood to be signs, manifested within natural phenomena, of gods who convey to those “who can see” that they intend to intervene in human affairs, to punish humans for injustices they have committed. The causal link between eclipses and human suffering thus depends upon human interpretation. Thucydides shows us just such a link in his treatment of Athens’ defeat in Sicily, or what he calls the greatest action of the entire war (VII.87). The decision by the Athenian general Nicias to delay by 27 days the retreat of his massive force from Sicily on account of an interpretation of a lunar eclipse (VII.50), allowed the Syracusans time to position their ships so as to blockade -- and ultimately defeat -- the Athenian navy. This naval defeat subsequently doomed the Athenians to a devastating retreat through hostile foreign territory, resulting in the surrender and captivity of the entire force and the deaths of almost all Athenians involved. The conclusion to which Thucydides draws us is that the Athenian catastrophe in Sicily was the product of Nicias’ excessive piety (VII.50 end) and not the eclipse itself. Whereas plagues and earthquakes (and the flooding that sometimes result, III.89) strike without warning, eclipses are taken by some to be themselves a warning, one of a divine wrath that has yet to befall us and may yet be avoided if we propitiate the gods. If Thucydides’ work is in fact as great as our author declares, then its greatness must at least partly consist in its ability to reveal the enduring truth about the nature and origins of human suffering (I.1): Those which men inflict on each other and those that men understand to come from

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nature, chance, and the divine. His treatment of these catastrophes must thus be of a piece with his analysis of politics and human nature. The impression that Thucydides understands these disasters to be the effect of a nature that governs us and whose movements are independent of the gods receives further support from his sustained and detailed treatment of the plague that devastated Athens. Long viewed by scholars as evidence of his scientific rationalism (Cochrane, 1929), Thucydides’ presentation of a disease that claimed nearly eighty thousand lives (Hanson, 2005, 65-88) seems to identify principles of a material nature rather than divine wrath at work in the origins, symptoms, and suffering of the plague (II.48-51). More to the point, Thucydides’ analysis of the plague’s effects on human anatomy implies a nature whose laws and principles are fixed and intelligible to human reason. And in his concluding remarks on this episode he emphasizes, and thus distinguishes from his own practice, the tendency of men to resort to selective and selfserving interpretations of prophetic verses both to explain their suffering and to imbue it with divine significance (II.54; cf. I.20). Thucydides, it would seem, does not reinterpret (or rephrase) oracles and prophecies to make them fit the present circumstances and thereby validate their divine authority; he relies instead on his understanding of the present to judge the validity of -- and thus the divine authority behind -- oracles and prophecies. As such, it appears that an understanding of natural principles of causation informs Thucydides’ decision to present the events of the war in chronological order by summers and winters; that is by natural, not political, markers. At the end of his treatment of the first ten-years of the war, Thucydides urges his reader to: consider the times themselves and not trust to the account of the names of such as in the several places bare chief offices or for some honor to themselves had their names ascribed for marks to the actions foregoing. For it is not exactly known who was in the beginning of his office, or who in the midst, or how he was, when anything fell out. But if one reckon the same by summers and winters, according as they are written, he shall find by the two half years which make the whole, that this first war was of ten summers and as many winters continuance (V.20).

Six chapters later Thucydides drives this point home: This also hath the same Thucydides of Athens written from point to point, by summers and winters, as everything came to pass, until such time as the Lacedaemonians and their confederates had made an end of the Athenian dominion and had taken their long walls and Pieraeus. To which time,

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from the beginning of the war, it is in all twenty-seven years (V.26.1; see also II.1 and II.65).

By following what is common to all men -- the unfolding of summers and winters -- and not what pertains merely to local customs or circumstances, Thucydides’ History appears to take its historiographical cues from a material nature that governs us and is in principle observable by all. But this view, which seems to receive so much support from Thucydides’ handling of natural disasters, is immediately complicated by the following observations, observations which his comments here cause us to note.

The Questionableness of Nature as a Guide As he draws to a close his account of the tenth year of the war, Thucydides stresses the superiority of natural or seasonal chronology to the practice of recording events according to who held high office (i.e., archons) or who had won high honors at the time of a particular event (i.e., Olympic victors). After all, people may disagree about when a particular term of office began or ended and the celebration of religious festivals or athletic contests can be altered and even suspended entirely by human agreement (III.104 end; V.49-50). The change of seasons, however, occurs entirely independent of human agency. But Thucydides insists on his adherence to this practice in a passage where he marks the end of winter by the festival of Dionysus (V.20.1). And in his brief account of the six year Peace of Nicias, placed squarely between the end of the tenth year of the war and his restatement on his “natural” historiographical principles (V.26), Thucydides marks the beginning of this period by the ephorate of Pleistolas at Sparta and the archonship of Alcaeus at Athens (V.25). Though he insists in the following chapter on the unity of the 27 year war, his comments here point to an important difference between his handling of the two “10-year wars” and the six year, ten month peace that separated them. Thucydides seems to employ different methods for different years. One might begin to understand this difference by noting that Thucydides ends his account of all six years of the Peace (years ten through fifteen of the war) with the rather succinct “thus ended the nth year of the war” a conclusion reserved for only two other years of his account (the first, II.47; and the eighth, IV.116). All other years he concludes with “…so ended the nth year of this war as written by Thucydides.” The twenty-first year of the war, the last year which Thucydides records, represents an exception to both practices since his account of that year offers no formal conclusion (whether intended or not; VIII.109).

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If the tenth through fifteenth years of the war reflect the ascendancy in Athenian politics of the man for whom that period is named as well as his piety (VII.50) and law-bred virtue (VII.86), then we might understand Thucydides’ historiographical practice to convey his judgment about both Nicias and the traits for which he is best known. The consequence of this observation is to invite readers to distance Thucydides from years to which he does not affix his name as author, years associated with conventional practices of marking time (though cf. II.1), the occasion of his own exile from Athens, Nician politics and virtues, and a nominal peace (years one, eight and ten through fifteen; the peculiar “ending” of the twenty first year of the war keeps this year an open-question). Subsequently, we are also invited to draw him closer to those years associated with seasonal chronology, the politics and virtues of a Periclean-Alcibidean axis, and the full violence of the war (years two through seven, nine, and sixteen through twenty). In other words, the years of the war can be divided along the following lines: convention, piety, moderation, and peace, on the one hand and nature, erotic daring, empire, war, and Thucydides on the other. But this sharp distinction cannot be sustained if only because Thucydides insists in this very same context on the unity of the war, a unity which would seem to apply to his work as well. All of the years of the war are written by Thucydides. How or in what way then might we begin to understand the historiographical unity of his epic? The possibility that he understands the natural and the divine to be consistent with each other may be discounted as simply too poetic. It is true that the duration of the 27-year war he composes was prophesied to last “thrice nine years” (V.26.4). And in his discussion of the sixth year of the war, Thucydides notes that the poet Hesiod was killed in Nemea, a fate consistent with a prophecy about the end his life (III.96). But Thucydides prevents his readers from endorsing the attractive, if misleading, parallel between this poet’s death and the length of this war because he ends his account six years early. Interestingly enough, the sixth year of the war is also the only year of the war whose account begins and ends with the report of natural disasters: earthquakes and the resultant flooding (III.89) and the eruption of Mt. Aetna (III.116), the “invasion” of water and fire into their opposite elements. The apparent synchronicity between the seasonal calendar and natural disasters suggested here is punctured by Thucydides’ report that Mt. Aetna’s volcano erupted in the spring of the following year (the seventh year of the war). Thucydides’ artful insertion of the volcano here at the end of the sixth year violates the principles he insists upon at V.24 and 26 (and II.1). By muddying the “historiographical waters,” as it were, Thucydides draws the attention of the reader to his treatment of this year.2

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Thucydides prepares his treatment of the sixth year of the war with a mention of the Athenians in Sicily and their inability to attack the islands of Aeolus in the summer due to the shallow water around the islands, preventing access to them by ship; the volcanic activity on Hiera, and the Hiereans’ religious explanation of that phenomenon (III.88, end of the fifth year); and the series of earthquakes at the beginning of the sixth year, one of which resulted in a massive wave whose flooding turned “what was once land” on Euboea into sea (III.89) killing those unable to occupy the higher ground in time. Thucydides closes this introduction by attributing the strength of “the wave” and its varied impact on the Greek islands to the earthquake and its epicenter: at Orobiae the tsunami flooded most of the town, leaving parts of it underwater; at Atalanta, the tsunami’s wave carried away part of the Athenian fort and wrecked one of its ships; at Perapethus, there was no flooding, but the earthquake caused considerable damage to the buildings. Thucydides is clear that the earthquake was the cause of these effects. But he doesn’t bother to say what caused the earthquake (see also his refusal to speak about the causes of the plague, II.48.3). Thucydides thus introduces his account of the sixth year of the war by inviting the reader to raise the question of first causes (“what caused the earthquake?”), only to leave that question about the material world unanswered. In its place, one gets an account of “the most memorable” (III.90; logou malista axia) aspects of Athenian activity during this year -and the Spartan response to that activity -- an account which focuses largely on Demosthenes’ campaigns in Aetolia. This “introduction” to the sixth year of the war not only leads us again to think about the relationship between politics and nature; it also recalls the opening of the History where Thucydides justifies his work’s thematic focus on the grounds that this war was “most worthy of note” (I.1; axiologotaton). And Thucydides’ comments about Hesiod (III.96) and his most extensive commentary on Homer (III.104), which digress from the broader Aetolian-Sicilian narrative, recall his contest with the poets (I.10; cf. III.96, 104), his account of his own treatment of speeches and deeds (I.20-22), and the oldest or first things (I.1) whose treatment was to decide in his favor the “war” between Thucydides and his poetic rivals. Thucydides’ treatment of the sixth year of the war should thus prove indispensable for understanding the triangulation between politics, nature, and the historiography of his work.

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Nature and Politics: Demosthenes in Aetolia In his account of the war’s sixth year, Thucydides introduces his reader to the Athenian general Demosthenes. Of the account’s 28 chapters, he dedicates 20 to Demosthenes’ campaign in Aetolia. Demosthenes represents one of the most fascinating, if perhaps least studied, political actors in Thucydides’ masterpiece. Without ascending to the heights seemingly reserved by Thucydides for his “Pericles” or “Brasidas,” Demosthenes remains the figure whose career most closely bears on our author’s preoccupation with both great suffering and noteworthy deeds. Whether it is the men he lost in Aetolia (III.98), the size of his slaughter of the Ambraciots (III.113), the Hellenic world’s surprise over the Spartan surrender at Pylos (which he engineered, IV.40.1), the fate he suffered in Sicily (VII.87.5), or even the atrocity at Mycalessus (made possible by his departure for Sicily, VII.29), Demosthenes is always somehow involved at the extremes of the war; he is on stage for many of the greatest moments of the greatest war, or the “greatest motion.” Is it merely coincidental that his career should also offer a case-study in how to create and amplify one’s power by mirroring the movements of the material world? Demosthenes’ campaign in Aetolia begins with an ambush of Leucadians and the investment of their city Leucas, itself located on an isthmus. Demosthenes’ allies here, the Acarnanians, urge the Athenian general to build a wall across the isthmus thereby cutting off the city from the continent (for the appropriateness of such Acarnanian advice, see II.102). At the same time, however, Demosthenes was also urged by the nearby Messenians to attack the inland Aetolians, which attack they promised would give Demosthenes a surpassingly easy conquest (III.94), one that Demosthenes himself hoped would add to his other “continental allies” and allow him to bring the war to Boeotia without additional aid from Athens. Demosthenes accepted the Messenians’ counsel and after initial successes against Potidania, Krokyle and Tichium, he was urged yet again to push ahead with his attack (III.97). Because he now began to trust “in his fortune,” Demosthenes did not wait for necessary Locrian reinforcements. This decision proved catastrophic. The result was an Athenian defeat at the hands of the lighter-armed barbarian forces; the Aetolian darters, by virtue of their superior position on higher ground, were able to gain the upper hand in a battle characterized by alternating advance and retreat (III.97). The defeat turned into a rout as many of the retreating Athenians, whose Messenian guide had been killed in the battle, got lost in a wood that the Aetolians then burned down. Of the 120 Athenians killed here, all of whom “were in the prime of life,” Thucydides

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says what he says of no one else in the History: these men were “by far the best men in the city of Athens that fell during this war” (III.98). The defeat was of such a magnitude that Demosthenes refused to sail back to Athens with his forces, choosing instead to remain by himself near Naupactus rather than risk suffering exile – or worse – at the hands of the enraged Athenians. Despite these failures, Demosthenes did not give up. Rather, he proved an adept student of both his own missteps and the ability of his enemy to exploit them. As such, he was able to apply the lessons learned from a bitter defeat in his effort to save both the cities of Naupactus and Olpae from the Spartan-led Aetolians. Indeed, his “education” allowed him not only to defeat the Spartans twice, but to deliver a blow so great that Thucydides called it “the greatest disaster that befell any one Greek city in an equal number of days in this war” (III.113). Demosthenes’ ability to secure the higher ground surrounding Idomene, his subsequent attack on Ambraciots in the dark hours of early morning, and his use of Messenian troops speaking the Doric dialect common to their enemies, enabled him to inflict a defeat of such magnitude that Thucydides refused to “set down the number of the dead, because the amount stated seems so out of proportion to the size of the city as to be incredible” (III.113; the number of Ambraciots killed that Thucydides makes available starts around 1,200 or ten times the number of men that Athens lost in Aetolia). And such lessons, it seems, were not parochial; what Demosthenes learned in Aetolia could be applied under similar conditions elsewhere. Thus as we learn from Thucydides’ account of the Pylos affair in Book IV, Demosthenes, aided by another Messenian “guide” (IV.36), was able to use to his advantage on the island of Sphacteria (IV.30) against his fellow Greeks what he learned earlier from the “continental” and barbarian Aetolians (III.98). Thucydides’ account of Demosthenes’ failure recalls his account of that retreating and advancing flood which killed all those incapable of making it to higher ground (III.89). Demosthenes’ successes at Naupactus, Olpae and Idomene, on the other hand, not only mirror the destructive power of nature, they amplify it. By framing Demosthenes’ campaign in Aetolia in terms of natural disasters, Thucydides invites his reader to consider the possibility that military failure and success hinges on one’s capacity to account for and imitate the powerful motions of nature. To be sure, Thucydides never suggests that Demosthenes studied earthquakes or tsunamis in order to devise some new tactical approach; his own painful military experience provided more than enough material on which he could reflect. But the parallel that Thucydides draws between

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Demosthenes’ defeat and success in Aetolia and earthquakes and tsunamis (or even volcanic activity, III.89) suggests that nature provides a useful guide or template for the creation and expansion of military power insofar as the destructive motions at work in one can also be used to great effect in the other. In Aetolia Demosthenes initially fails to guarantee himself possession of the high ground; he doesn’t adjust to the “ebb and flow” of battle against lighter-armed adversaries; he doesn’t possess direct knowledge of both the enemy’s numerical strength and the foreign landscape in which he fights; he doesn’t sufficiently appreciate the need for local allies who might offset some of the advantages enjoyed by the indigenous opposition; and his defeat is turned into a rout by the dangers of dark woods for men of the city. Demosthenes’ later victories, by contrast, suggest his grasp of the significance of all of these elements. As such, Demosthenes refuses to give battle when he doesn’t enjoy these advantages. One might expand on the parallel between Thucydides’ handling of natural phenomena and Demosthenes’ exploits by observing that his military successes were made possible by the judicious application of an appropriate mixture of forces related to “land” and “sea,” to “Greeks” and “barbarians,” and to “Athens” and “Sparta.” That this mixture must be appropriate, that it is conditional and therefore must observe certain limits, can be gleaned from Demosthenes’ success over the Eurylochus-led Spartans. In that engagement, Demosthenes’ distinct (or unmixed), if outmanned, forces routed the mixed together Peloponnesian and Aetolian armies (the Mantineans, who kept themselves distinct, prove an exception to this grim fate, III.107, 108). A complete or indiscrete mixture of the elements, however, is not conducive to military success as indicated by his military defeats (III.95, cf. II.102; III.98). But this also suggests that such a mixture, if it is to be produced, must be produced intentionally; it must be the product of human intelligence and foresight. Demosthenes’ strategic defeats and triumphs in Aetolia are thus properly contrasted with the undirected or unguided movements of nature, whose earthquakes and tsunamis, for example, impact various locations differently, indiscriminately sparing some human beings while indifferently (or unintentionally) destroying others. The success or failure of the Athenian general depends, at least in part, on his direct knowledge of the enemy’s strengths and the layout of their territory. His reasoned grasp of the principles of military success, principles that seem to be reflected in the “unreasoned” movements of nature, allows him to inflict intentionally a staggering defeat on his enemies, one that dwarfed the suffering produced by his men’s chance retreat into the Aetolian woods.

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Because his understanding allows him to harness and direct forces that in nature seem undirected, Demosthenes may appear even more destructive than nature, and thus more capable of inflicting human suffering, a point supported by Thucydides’ silence about the number of victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Demosthenes’ remarkable military turn-around is based on his ability to take account of and replicate the interplay of forces that, as Thucydides’ artistry shows, can also be found in nature. He was able to create and magnify his own military power because he understood how his own forces were destroyed. Thus through an understanding of a particular manner of decay or degeneration, Demosthenes appeared to discover a particular form of growth or (re)generation; he discovered how he could generate more power for himself and for Athens. Unlike the silence about what caused the earthquake that produced the devastating tidal wave at the beginning of 426 BCE (or caused the plague), Thucydides’ narrative on Demosthenes suggests that the source of his creative destruction can be found within this supremely talented human being. Might the mind and soul of a man like Demosthenes prove the sources or “first causes” of the more powerful motions in political life? Demosthenes’ experience in Aetolia reminds one of those Athenian engagements in Sicily with which Thucydides opens and concludes the sixth year of the war (III.88 and 116; see also 99, 103, 115). And Thucydides’ last reference to the Greeks on Sicily (III.116), raised in the context of his discussion of the eruption of Mt. Aetna, points ahead to his “Sicilian archaeology” (VI. 2-6), an account that appears far more deferential to the poetic stories of the Cyclopses and Laestrigonians than does his first archaeology (I.1-19). Indeed, the night assault on Idomene (III.112; cf. VII.43, 44), his comments about the destruction of the Ambraciots (III.112 end; cf. VII.87 end), and his references to Athenian action in Sicily call to mind pivotal moments in the doomed Sicilian expedition. Thucydides thus seems to intimate by the end of Book III that success or failure in Sicily will depend on Athens achieving the proper balance of antithetical elements. That we know the Athenians failed in Sicily suggests that they didn’t achieve this balance. Did they fail because they were insufficiently attentive to the true character of their physical environs? Or might they have been too poetic in their outlook and aspirations? Given what we have already learned about Demosthenes in Aetolia, one wonders how this could be possible. But a closer look at the campaign at Pylos will show how Demosthenes’ approach to nature may itself be a form of piety.

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Nature and Piety: A “Nician” Demosthenes? Demosthenes’ greatest victory was his triumph over the Spartan forces on the island of Sphacteria in 425 BCE. Thucydides’ artfully structured narrative of this campaign (IV.2-40) suggests that, despite the apparent role played by chance in this account, the Athenian victory here was the product of a carefully designed plan by Demosthenes, one designed before he left Athens and that he set in motion before the storm “forced” the fleet led by him, Sophocles, and Eurymedon to land at Pylos (IV.3). A study of the details of this narrative suggests that Demosthenes’ plan from the beginning was to draw the Spartans into an engagement that would tempt them to make the colossal strategic blunder of landing troops on the island of Sphacteria, a plan ultimately aimed at the capture and humiliation of the Spartan hoplites, and the destruction of their formidable warrior mystique.3 To see the kind of foresight such a plan would entail, let us consider some of the following examples. Demosthenes understood that the Spartans would not be able to take by land the garrison at Pylos once it was fortified (especially with their army in Attica and their city in the midst of a festival), that the Athenians would thus need to fortify their positions before the Spartan army could return and their city regroup, and that the Spartans would subsequently need to depend on their navy to remove the Athenians from occupied territory. Moreover, because he could count on Spartan insecurity about its navy, Demosthenes could reasonably predict that the Spartans would be inclined to rush their naval efforts to retake Pylos before the Athenian fleet, which left behind a “vulnerable” force under Demosthenes’ command, could backtrack from its presumed westward voyage and relieve Sparta’s siege (a return Demosthenes made sure the Spartans knew was imminent). And this meant knowing that the Spartans would use the same tactic they employed in the Crisaean Gulf against Phormio’s numerically inferior navy, one which deployed hoplites on the shores to support their triremes (II.86.1, 87.6). Of course, all of this would have been for naught had Demosthenes not also known the physical character of both Pylos and Sphacteria, knowledge of which was crucial for his particular fortifications at Pylos and his detailed assault plan for Sphacteria. Demosthenes’ plan, in both design and execution, thus presupposes a grasp of the physical nature of the locations involved (and the waters around them) and the political psychology and habits of the respective belligerents. It is no accident that the Athenian demagogue Kleon arrives at Pylos when he does or that he does so with the kinds of troops perfectly suited for fighting on the rocky terrain of Sphacteria (IV.28-30).

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What the narrative, at an initial glance here, suggests is due to luck or the accidental motions of nature or human impulse (IV.4.1; Hornblower, 1996, 156), Thucydides, through his own deliberately designed account, shows the reader to be instead the work of intelligence; what otherwise appears happenstance is in reality the product of human forethought (Connor, 1984, 110; Hornblower; 1996, 152; see also I.138). Such artistry, employed in the service of this particular insight, naturally invites the reader to wonder if Thucydides’ handling of the Pylos affair doesn’t also serve as a metaphor for the intelligence at work in his own historiography. Moreover, the blow Demosthenes sought to strike to the reverence the Greeks reserved for the Spartans -- showing the god-fearing and ancestral worshipping Spartans to be “paper tigers” -- would surely have farreaching implications for the war (as it promised to, see IV.15-22; 40.1). Might it not also bear on Thucydides’ interest in exposing the true character of Sparta’s piety and her famed power? Demosthenes’ success here is not attributable to intelligence alone. Just before the Spartan navy attempts a difficult landing on Pylos -- at the one place in the fortifications that Demosthenes has curiously left vulnerable -he addresses those few men chosen to defend the rocky beach (IV.10). Demosthenes begins by stating that he doesn’t want those who share in the present danger to try to show themselves wise by calculating all of the odds against them. He then follows this admonition by calculating the many reasons why the Athenians at the beach landing should be confident in the coming engagement. These reasons make up the rest of his brief speech. That Demosthenes has carefully weighed all of the “perils” should come as no surprise to anyone. And his soldiers should indeed take comfort from the detailed planning of their general. But given his original admonition, one can’t help but wonder if Demosthenes isn’t committing the very “sin” against which he has cautioned his men. Isn’t he indulging the desire to display his wisdom for others to see? Moreover, what is it that Thucydides hopes to convey to his readers about Demosthenes by presenting such an obvious inconsistency in this speech -- the only speech of Demosthenes recorded in direct discourse in the entire History -- in the midst of a narrative that both points to and replicates the general’s remarkable intelligence and subtlety? If this speech represents Demosthenes’ rhetoric, then that rhetoric trains those capable of following it to see for themselves both the value of calculation and that Demosthenes possesses that virtue in spades. We thus might begin to understand why the generals, sailors, and soldiers who initially rejected his advice to fortify Pylos, embraced this plan with such enthusiasm once they could see its wisdom for themselves (Haduong,

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2006). One might even wonder if his “inconsistency” here doesn’t shed light on the motive behind his careful orchestration of all of the forces at Pylos. Does Demosthenes seek to produce the kind of triumph that would reveal his intelligence to those carefully trained to see and appreciate it? If this is true, then Demosthenes’ subtle revelation of his own brilliance should not be confused with the vulgar and selfish display of one’s cleverness that he advises against (because it would imperil the Athenian cause at Pylos) and that Kleon so violently denounces as politically harmful (III.37). After all, Demosthenes secures for Athens a tremendous victory for which Kleon tries to take the credit. Nor should such a refined self-disclosure be confused with the gaudier “Olympic” aspirations of the tyrannical Cylon (I.126) or the slippery Alcibiades (VI.16.2; cf. V.80). There is something more Diodotean, and thus Thucydidean, in Demosthenes’ self-display. But Thucydides, no less subtly than his Demosthenes, also points to an important difference between himself and this general. Thucydides tells us that in his effort to persuade his fellow generals to fortify Pylos, Demosthenes appeals to the nature of the place; it was “strong by nature” (phusei karteron on, IV.3.2). Later, Thucydides, when speaking of the virtues of Pylos in his own voice, refers only to the “place itself” (tou koriou auto karteron, IV.4.2; Strauss, 159, 1963). He refuses to attribute to nature the particular virtues that recommend the fortification of Pylos. The difference between the two men might be stated broadly, if imperfectly, as follows. Demosthenes can only operate militarily as he does if he thinks the political and material worlds operate according to fixed laws and principles that can be known and mastered, or at least predicted, by human beings. For Demosthenes, the material world is something that can be manipulated or “negotiated” to serve his own political and military goals. While this view would exclude the belief in divine beings who could intervene in human affairs by moving natural elements according to their own wishes or impulses, it nevertheless views the material world, as something that can be known and manipulated by man, as an ordered “home” that is not completely indifferent to human hopes and aspirations. In this respect, Demosthenes’ naturalistic view of the world is similar to the kind of piety practiced by Nicias, who seeks to divine the will of the gods through a “reading” of nature’s motions and to propitiate those gods by long-standing rituals and practices. The trust in “fortune” of which his defeats in Aetolia cured him appears to have been replaced by a trust in an ordered and intelligible nature. That Thucydides’ criticism of Nician piety as too trusting in divination (VII.50.4) might also apply to Demosthenes’ view of nature receives

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additional support by the ways his text invites the reader to think of these two men together. Demosthenes’ first failed campaign is introduced alongside Thucydides’ reference to Nicias’ ineffective Melian expedition (III.91). And that campaign began in Nemea, the precinct famous for the prophesied death of Hesiod (III.96), an image whose richness prompts one to wonder if Demosthenes’ own military hopefulness originates in a form of poetry or prophecy. Later, in Sicily, Demosthenes twice objects strenuously (VII.47.3, 49.2-3) to Nicias’ proposal to remain encamped before Syracuse only to drop his opposition on the mere suspicion (uponoia) that Nicias’ continued resistance must be due to his greater knowledge (which knowledge, inexplicably, he never insists Nicias share). For a man who was willing to argue against the views of two generals at Pylos and who persisted in his designs there after initially failing to persuade the sailors, soldiers, and captains, this willingness to trust Nicias here, when so much more is at stake, is baffling. Finally, Demosthenes’ last reported speech is said to “very nearly resemble” (paraplesia legon, VII.78.1) Nicias’ final recorded speech (in direct discourse, VII.77). That brief speech, after quickly noting Nicias’s own good fortune and devotion to the gods, grounds the confidence of the Athenians equally in the justice of the gods and the numbers and efficiency of their hoplites. It strains credulity to think Demosthenes’ speech could “very nearly resemble” Nicias’ speech if it omitted half of the original. Thucydides’ reluctance to attribute the virtues of Pylos to nature does not allow us to conclude that he thinks the material world bereft of all order; after all, summers and winters will continue to alternate. In light of his handling of natural phenomena, it is perhaps more accurate to say that Thucydides views the material world as having what might be called “ways” or “manners” which can be discerned or grasped, but not fixed natures whose material causes can be known objectively by the human mind. It is perhaps for this reason that Thucydides, when referring to the wisdom his work makes possible, refers not to human nature but the “human thing” (kata ton anthropinon, I.23.4).

Thucydides’ “Manner” and Periclean Athens Thucydides’ criticism of Nician piety is perhaps most apparent in books VI and VII of the History. But the reader discovers the grounds for that criticism (and with it the grounds for his rejection of Demosthenes’ view of nature) in his account of Periclean Athens. Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ career occupies the latter part of Book I and most of Book II, a career which is more moderate than it is aggressively imperialist.

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Thucydides situates four crucial passages on Pericles in the context of failed Athenian interventions in matters of succession in Thessaly and Thrace: 1.) his early career (I.111); 2.) his assembly of the largest army of Athenians ever (II.31) and his famous Funeral Oration (II.35-46); 3.) his third and final speech (II.60-64); and 4.) the truth about his political moderation (II.102). These are in turn coupled with references to the motions of the material world (Egyptians turning water into land, I.109110; a solar eclipse, II.28; the plague, II.47-54; the emergence of land where there was water, II.102). These passages also “touch on” Acarnania, a region in Greece named after Acarnus, the son of Alcmeon (I. 111; II.2930, 33; 67-8, which deals with Amphilochus, Alcmeon’s brother, and 95101), and almost all of them deal with the virtues of possessing cavalry of sufficient quality and numbers. Thucydides introduces Pericles with an otherwise unremarkable discussion of a failed Athenian engagement in Thessaly: Athens tried to restore Orestes to the throne of Thessaly but had been thwarted in this attempt by Thessalian cavalry (I.111). And in their first appearance in the History (I.107), the Thessalian cavalry, just moments before the massive and evenly matched forces of the Athenians and Spartans were about to do-battle, betrayed the Athenians and switched sides. This betrayal tipped the odds of the battle which ended up as a closely fought victory for Sparta. The decision by Athens not to bring sufficient cavalry against Thessaly thus suggests a weakness within her imperial strategy, one, as we will see, not born from ignorance, but from domestic objections to her foreign policy (see also VI.24.6). Given this introduction, it seems that Pericles’ remarkable, if somewhat modest, imperial success is due in no small part to his awareness that not all elements of Athenian society supported the goals and costs of her democratic imperialism. This may explain why, when the Athenians were enduring the devastation wrought by both the second Spartan invasion of Attica and the plague, Pericles decided to send a massive force of hoplites (almost four thousand) with nearly 300 cavalry in specially designed naval transports to harass the Peloponnese (II.56). By ensuring that those citizens whose lands and homes were currently being ravaged were no longer in Athens, but in the Peloponnese venting their frustration on their enemies, Pericles could relieve some of the domestic pressures brought on by his strategic decisions without also risking his city’s military strength. Thucydides’ treatment of the plague suggests that Pericles had to tailor his imperial policy to account for the limitations facing him domestically (see also II.65.8-9). Thucydides’ final “frame” of Pericles’ career – his

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treatment of Alcmeon – is perhaps most helpful in understanding the genius behind Pericles’ successful rule in Athens. After relating the failed efforts of Sitalces to fulfill an oath he had made with the Athenians, Thucydides recounts the story of the mythical Alcmeon (II.102). The reader will initially resist the temptation to link this Alcmeon with Pericles because he is not the one for whom Pericles’ family line (the Alcmeonids) is named. But Thucydides might pardon any hermeneutic indulgence on this score on the grounds that he himself highlights how both this Alcmeon and Pericles “silence” women (II.102.5; II.45.2). And using the mythical Alcmeon instead of one of the many historical Alcmeonids related to Pericles has the advantage of revealing the truth about the moderate or measured basis of Periclean power without allowing the reader to treat one as the cause or origin of the other. In other words, the metaphorical use of this myth offers one more curb to thinking in terms of a linear causality (and thus first causes) outside of human agency that can be known by reason. The Alcmeon of lore was a matricide compelled by Apollo to walk the earth until he should find a land that the sun had not touched at the time he killed his mother. According to Apollo’s oracle, Alcmeon would have no release from his terrors until he found such unpolluted territory. Thucydides reports that Alcmeon eventually found this land at the mouth of the river Achelous, whose alluvial deposits continually created new land connecting Oenia on the continent to the nearby islands. According to Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides, Thucydides points in this passage to the “moderation” of Alcmeon. Though Thucydides makes no mention of the term “moderation” here, Alcmeon may nevertheless achieve a kind of moderation through his release from the terror caused by a belief in wrathful gods, a release caused by his recognition that principles of causation, exclusive of gods who interfere in the affairs of men, are at work in the world (Burns, 2010, 10). If Pericles’ ability to hold Athens together during the war results from an awareness of the limitations that constrained his imperial policy, then perhaps we see in Alcmeon’s story the roots or ground of such an awareness. Alcmeon seems to learn not to impose on the world his own views of the gods and their roles in the affairs of men; his is an education in the principles of human behavior, the power of necessity, and the proper balancing of the principles of “land” and “sea” (and of “motion” and “rest” and “Greek” and “barbarian”), that proves so crucial to Demosthenes’ military successes. And it seems the grasp of this mixture allows Pericles to navigate the contending forces of Athenian politics, those, like the more conservative oligarchs, who represent land and thus rest, and the more

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radical, immoderate and pro-imperial democrats, who represent water and thus motion. To say that the moderate rule reflected in Pericles’ careful blending of rival forces resembles the blending that proved so crucial to Alcmeon’s “liberation” is not to say that his understanding is the same as that conveyed by the myth. After all, like Demosthenes, Pericles evinces more than once a desire for the kind of fixity or rest in Athenian political affairs (I.140.1, 143.5; II.41.4, 42, 45.2) that is implicit in Demosthenes’ view of an ordered and intelligible material world. Pericles may thus share the piety of Demosthenes from which reflection on Alcmeon’s experience should cure one. For this reason, Thucydides can no more endorse Periclean moderation than he can endorse Demosthenes’ view of nature. The virtue of the Alcmeon myth is not that his particular moderation informs or powers Athenian imperial policy. Its virtue consists in showing how a kind of psychic moderation can be caused by reflecting on the interplay of land and water and thus categories like “motion” and “rest,” “human” and “divine.” What the reader must wonder is whether or not there is an alternative to the pious religiosity of Nicias and the equally pious, if less religious, views of Demosthenes and Pericles. Is there an alternative that can lead the reader to a self-knowledge free from the pious hopes plaguing the work’s actors? As we saw in Thucydides’ treatment of Demosthenes, two possible sources of the most powerful motions in the human and political worlds were the minds and souls of certain talented individuals. But what kind of treatment of first causes reserves a place for the mind and the soul, whose desire for self-disclosure, and thus selfunderstanding, seem to be the real source of motions in political life, such as we saw in the campaign at Pylos? Thucydides’ work constitutes such an alternative through its very historiography. Thucydides’ manner, that is his particular treatment of the war, is Periclean insofar as it reflects the statesman’s ability to blend successfully antithetical forces at work in his community through a narrative that weaves together politics and nature, that counterbalances issues of motion and rest, and that braids stories of the Spartans and Athenians, and Greeks and barbarians into a unified account of Periclean Athens at war. But it does so without endorsing the belief in a cosmic order that corresponds to human hopes and desires. And because his work places politics at its thematic center, Thucydides’ focus reinforces what he indicated earlier about Demosthenes’ motives in Pylos: on the question of causes, Thucydides, instead of dilating on the metaphysical status of nature and the divine, substitutes the motions of the mind and the soul -perhaps even the motions of his own soul (see I.1.1 and I.1.2; Dobski,

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2010, 131-132) -- as they come to light through his particular presentation of Periclean Athens.

Works Cited Bruell, Christopher. 1974. “Thucydides’ View of Athenian Imperialism.” American Political Science Review. Volume 68: 11-17. Burns, Timothy. December 2010. “Marcellinus’ Life of Thucydides, translated into English from the Greek, with an Introductory Essay.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. Volume 38. Issue 1: 3–25. Cochrane, C.N. 1929. Thucydides and the Science of History. Oxford University Press. Connor, W.R. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Dobski, Bernard. Winter 2010. “Thucydides’ Philosophic Turn to Causes.” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. Vol. 37. Issue 2: 123-155. Foster, Edith. Fall 2009. “The Rhetoric of Materials: Thucydides and Lucretius.” The American Journal of Philology. No. 3: 367-399. Hanson, Victor Davis. 2005. A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. New York: Random House. Haduong, Thang Teddy. 2006. “Demosthenes and Sphakteria.” Unpublished paper. Los Angeles, CA. Hobbes, Thomas. 1989. The Peloponnesian War: The Complete Hobbes Translation, edited by David Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hornblower, Simon. 1996. A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 2, Books IV-V. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orwin, Clifford. 1994. The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Proietti, Gerald. 1992. “The Natural World and the Political World in Thucydides’ History.” In Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory, Essays in Honor of George Anastaplo, edited by J. Murley, R. Stone, and W. Braithwaite. 184-194. Athens: Ohio University Press. Strauss, Leo. 1963. The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Notes 1

Thucydides’ work has no official title. I follow convention in referring to it as the History. All references to Thucydides’ History are in standard book, chapter, and, where relevant, sentence, form. Translations of Thucydides’ Greek are from Hobbes’s rendering (1989). 2 While the present essay owes a great deal to the chapter on Thucydides in The City and Man by Leo Strauss, my treatment of Thucydides’ handling of the sixth year of the war is especially indebted to his comments in footnotes 10, 70, and 83. 3 My understanding of the details surrounding the Pylos affair, especially as those details bear on Demosthenes’ ultimate strategy in this campaign, owes a considerable debt both to the treatment of the secondary literature and to the sensitive exegesis of this narrative by Thang Teddy Haduong (2006).

CHAPTER FOUR REASON, RELIGION AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH: SOCRATES AND ANTIGONE AS DEMOCRATIC HEROES? ANN WARD

Plato’s Socrates and Sophocles’ Antigone are often seen as models of free inquiry and expression in the face of unjust political power. In the Apology of Socrates, Socrates argues that he spent his life questioning the authoritative opinions that supported the laws of Athens. Socrates’ philosophic life resulted in his trial for not believing in the city’s gods and corrupting the young. He is found guilty and condemned to death, a death which Socrates’ accepts rather than cease his unique way of speaking. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone defies Creon’s decree to leave her brother Polynices unburied, accepting the penalty of death for her actions. Before being buried alive she speaks against Creon’s tyrannical rule of Thebes, claiming that she gives voice to a citizenry too afraid to critique their ruler. Although both Socrates and Antigone can be viewed as ancient precursors to the democratic defence of freedom of speech, this chapter also explores important ways in which they differ. Whereas Antigone puts loyalty to family and divine law above human law, Socrates acknowledges that he has not cared for the things of his family and, despite characterizing himself as a gift of the god to the city, gains a rational self-knowledge that can put military necessity ahead of the desire to give the dead a proper burial, coming to light in his defense of the generals of the Battle of Arginusae. This chapter thus concludes that Antigone would be one of Socrates’ accusers rather than defenders, but surprisingly more at home in a modern, liberal democracy than one guided by Socratic reason.

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Democracy and Freedom of Speech Scholars such as Arlene Saxonhouse turn to ancient Athens to explore the connection between democracy and freedom of speech. Although abstracted from the language of rights and protections that dominate our contemporary debates, Saxonhouse locates the freedom of speech that emerges with the transition to democracy in fifth and fourth century B.C. Athens as the ancient precursor to our modern, liberal democratic understanding of freedom of speech.1 Saxonhouse argues that freedom of speech in ancient Athens entailed opening public debate and deliberation to all citizens, granting everyone the freedom to say what one thought without shame or respect for traditional hierarchies.2 The expansion of who could engage in public deliberation and of what one could say, according to Saxonhouse, was not instituted to protect the private right of individuals but rather for the sake of self-rule.3 Moreover, in exploring the practice of free speech in ancient Athens, Saxonhouse finds Socrates, “the truly democratic man,” to be its highest exponent.4 Claiming that the Platonic dialogues, especially the Apology of Socrates, illustrate the crucial connection between philosophy and freedom of speech and therewith philosophy and democracy, Saxonhouse argues that in Plato we find someone, “sympathetic to a democratic Socrates struggling against the socially controlling power of a hierarchically based shame.”5 Considering Sophocles’ Antigone Saxonhouse, although characterizing the perspectives of both Antigone and Creon as unifocal and lacking in complexity, nonetheless acknowledges that Antigone represents the “fundamental diversity of nature” that goes unrecognized yet confronts the masculine public realm of the city represented by Creon.6 Saxonhouse argues that the tragedians of ancient Athens portrayed political leaders on stage who sought civic unity through the denial of difference and the subjection of nature to the rational control of the human intellect.7 In order to critique this vision of the Athenian polis, according to Saxonhouse, “playwrights often turned to the female, for in her difference from the male she revealed a diversity in nature that threatened the physical order and rational control at which the polis aimed.”8 Scholars such as Judith Butler go further. Arguing that in her act of burying her brother Polynices, and her verbal, public refusal to deny this act to Creon, Antigone, “appears to assume the form of a certain masculine sovereignty, a manhood that cannot be shared.”9 As Creon is reduced to the “feminine and inferior,” so, according to Butler, “neither [Antigone nor Creon] maintains their position within gender and the disturbance of kinship appears to destabilize gender throughout the play.”10 Moreover, as this passage indicates, not only does

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Antigone challenge and thus undermine traditional or culturally sanctioned gender boundaries, but she also challenges or transgresses kinship boundaries. Antigone does so, Butler argues, by expressing and eventually embracing in death her incestuous, erotic love for her brother. According to Butler, “perhaps [it is] the unlivable desire with which she lives, incest itself, that makes her life a living death, that has no place within the terms that confer intelligibility on life.”11 Antigone, therefore, in Butler’s view, destabilizing gender identities and manifesting incestuous desire, can be seen as a symbol of the gender diversity and open sexuality that modern society increasingly seeks to celebrate. Although Antigone represents difference and alterity in her actions, and hence the pluralism that is often embraced by modern liberal democracies, one may question how this is related to the freedom of speech that challenges authority and is at the core of Socratic philosophy. To address this question it is important to understand that Antigone’s defiance of Creon’s decree that Polynices go unburied and unmourned is not primarily in doing the deed, but rather in affirming in speech that she has done the deed in response to Creon’s questioning (Antigone, 492).12 As Butler argues, “[t]o publish one’s act in language is in some sense the completion of the act,” and for Antigone, “[t]he claiming becomes an act that reiterates the act it affirms, extending the act of insubordination by performing its avowal in language.”13 Thus, of prime importance for Antigone is that she give expression to her defiance to Creon and the city of Thebes in the form of the Chorus. That Antigone’s act is primarily a speech act is brought into sharper focus by scholars such as Jennet Kirkpatrick who argue that we should consider that it is actually Antigone’s sister Ismene who performs the first burial of Polynices’ body.14 In the course of Sophocles’ play Polynices’ body actually goes through three different burials. The first is done hastily and in secret before the guards sent out to prevent such burial arrive (Antigone, 277-79). The second is done by Antigone in broad daylight in front of the guards by whom she is captured, and the third by Creon after having repented due to his exchange with the blind prophet Tiresias (Antigone, 475-79, 1323-26). If it is true, as Kirkpatrick suggests, that Ismene performed the first hasty burial in secret hoping not to be caught, then it is indeed Antigone’s very open performance of the deed with perhaps the hope of being apprehended that Sophocles sheds light on. For Antigone, her “deed” should be a form of expression. Further evidence that Antigone wishes her deed to be a form of expression occurs near the beginning of the play in her first exchange with Ismene. Unable to persuade her sister to obey Creon’s decree, Ismene counsels Antigone to keep her deed “a secret,” and she

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likewise promises not to tell anyone. In response, Antigone says, “Dear god, shout it from the rooftops. I’ll hate you all the more for silence—tell the world!” (Antigone, 99-101). Moreover, after telling Creon that “[y]our moralizing repls me,” and that she will have glory for her deed, Antigone claims that her speech represents the speech of the Theban citizenry who would express agreement with and praise for her, “if their lips weren’t locked in fear” (Antigone, 565). In associating Antigone and especially Socrates with the freedom of speech that is at the heart of democracy, Butler and to a greater extent Saxonhouse are building upon the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. In his famous work On Liberty, Mill argues that his main concern for the future is not protecting the rights of individuals against the potential tyranny of the state, but rather promoting the development of “individuality” in the face of what he says is, “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.”15 Social tyranny, “enslaving the soul itself,” is characterized by Mill as, “the tendency of society to impose […] its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them,” thus preventing any “individual spontaneity” from arising.16 The type of liberty Mill is thus interested in is the freedom of each to construct their own unique, individual identity without fear of “the moral coercion of public opinion,” or the social stigma that can result when we differ from our fellow citizens, provided we do no harm to others in the process.17 Mill argues that if individuality or the development of idiosyncratic and innovative ways of thinking and acting is to flourish, three freedoms are essential: the freedom of speech, or thought and discussion; the freedom of lifestyle, or tastes and pursuits; and the freedom to associate with like-minded individuals.18 Interested in this chapter primarily in the freedom of speech, Mill makes three arguments for why neither government nor society should suppress unorthodox or diverse opinions even if they are believed to be harmful or untrue. First, Mill argues that silenced opinions may be true as we can never be sure of the rightness of prevailing public opinion; the reason of individuals, communities and historical epochs is fallible.19 Pointing out in this context that many beliefs and opinions condemned in the past are now accepted as true, Mill offers Socratic teachings as a prime example. Although Socrates is convicted and put to death for impiety and immorality by his fellow Athenians, according to Mill, “we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue… [as the] acknowledged master of all eminent thinkers who have since lived.”20 The second reason Mill provides for the necessity of near absolute freedom of expression is that, even if opinions are false, the contestation

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coming from bad or erroneous opinions strengthen, by grounding them in reason, the truthful opinions that we do hold.21 Challenges to our most deeply held beliefs, Mill argues, force us to think through why we really believe something is true in the face of such challenges, thus enabling us to give a rational account of our beliefs both to our ourselves and others. Contestation, therefore, prevents what may be a true opinion from becoming, “an hereditary creed, […] received passively, not actively […] as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness.”22 The third reason for removing all restrictions on speech, according to Mill, is that conflicting opinions may not simply be a struggle between truth and falsehood, but each may represent a partial truth.23 The example Mill gives is that political life in modern democracies is usually divided between two types of parties: one representing the desire for order and stability the other for progress and reform.24 According to Mill, both have a claim to truth the expression and exploration of which is beneficial to society. Mill warns that as scientific knowledge advances and expands, allowing humankind to improve with the progress of history, “the number of doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increase.”25 The danger of this “consolidation of opinion” at the end of history is that it may end what Mill perceives as the ongoing conflict of ideas which is ensured when one accepts the three bases for near absolute freedom of speech: silenced opinions may be true, challenges from false opinions strengthen true opinions, and conflicting ideas ensure access to the whole truth. In the absence of a natural foundation for the expression of a diversity of opinions, Mill hopes that the, “teachers of mankind […] provide a substitute [or] some contrivance” for it.26 The contrivance Mill looks to is Socratic philosophy. According to Mill: Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the great questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing anyone who had merely adopted the commonplaces of received opinion that he did not understand the subject—that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order that becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to obtain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and their evidence .27

As the above passage indicates, Mill suggests that his advocacy of the ongoing conflict of ideas necessary for the development of individuality and resting on freedom of speech, is an analogy for or modern revival of

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the Socratic dialectical method, especially the Socratic skepticism and questioning of authoritative opinions illustrated in Plato’s Apology. Saxonhouse and Mill both find a Platonic Socrates that speaks freely without deference to authority or regard to shame and traditional hierarchies. Socratic philosophy, therefore, for Saxonhouse and Mill plays a crucial political role in both ancient and modern democracies. Yet, this appears to contradict Socrates’ claim in the Apology that he questioned the opinions of his fellow Athenians in private as individuals, and avoided advising them collectively in the assembly because, according to Socrates, “a man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time” (Apology, 32a).28 Scholars such as Catherine Zuckert take this claim in the Apology seriously and argue that Socratic philosophy or the examination of received opinions, from Socrates’ point of view, must go on in private rather than in public. Zuckert argues that a Socratic education aims at giving its participants a certain order and harmony to their souls that, if left to their own devices, would be riven with a conflict of desires, anger and practical cunning that can devise means to various undesirable ends.29 Such psychic order as Socratic education provides requires the examination of our opinions and motives, and hence Socratic dialectic aims to give Socrates’ interlocutors a form of self-knowledge regarding what they truly want, and thus, from Zuckert’s point of view, what they truly believe is good.30 Yet, most people are aware that sometimes what they genuinely want for themselves, such as an unjust profit at the expense of others, is at odds with the law which they themselves pass to check themselves on behalf of the common good.31 For the sake of preserving the law that would otherwise be undermined if such motives and desires were brought to the surface, Socratic questioning which seeks to plumb the depths of our souls must remain private rather than public. Zuckert thus claims that, “Socrates did not question the wisdom of the laws directly or in public; on the contrary he obeyed the laws and urged others to do so as well.”32 Such public deference to the laws meant that Socrates did not wish to address the Athenians together as a body politic, but rather, “questioned the integrity and wisdom of individuals, some (but only some) of whom participated in making Athenian laws.”33 In an alternative reading of the Apology, Lee Ward argues that Socrates’ characterization of philosophy as an essentially private activity is a reflection of the city’s assumptions, not that of the philosopher.34 Indeed, throughout the Apology, Ward argues, Socrates displays a pattern of blurring the distinction between public and private. For instance, Socrates acknowledges that his questioning of leading Athenian politicians

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had a political impact among important segments of the public, that his military service at the battles of Potidea, Amphipolis and Delium are clear examples of civic courage in service of the city, and that his role as “gadfly”—being sent as a gift of the god to the city to prod his fellow Athenians every day to care for virtue and their souls rather than wealth and power—has an inescapably public dimension.35 Socrates’ questioning of his fellow Athenians did go on in the marketplace (agora) rather than the assembly, but Ward argues, “to the extent that the agora is part of the public square, then Socrates’ philosophic activity was private only in the sense that it did not typically take place within the deliberative institutions of the Athenian state.”36 Ward goes further, arguing that Socrates’ account of his role in the assembly during the trial of the generals from Arginusae and his refusal to participate in the arrest of Leon the Salaminian during the rule of the thirty tyrants, is intended to critique the narrow understanding of political life as the holding of public office for the purpose of domination and rule.37 With respect to the trial of the generals in particular, Ward shows that in defending the rule of law against the proposals being supported by the assembly, Socrates indicates that philosophy promotes a form of public reason that supports military necessity against what seems to be the religious furor of the multitude.38 According to Ward, considering Socrates’ account of the trial of the generals, “we would [have to] be open to the possibility that philosophy is not in conflict with, but actually offers active intellectual assistance to the city as it works through the tension between civic commitment and the emotional attachments animating the city’s constituent parts.”39 Like Zuckert’s reading of the Apology, many scholars have read Sophocles’ Antigone as portraying the female lead as representative of the private rather than the public sphere. Focussing on G.W.F. Hegel’s reading of the play in The Phenomenology of Spirit, Butler argues that for Hegel Antigone articulates a prepolitical opposition to politics grounded in loyalty to kinship and blood relations, where, “Antigone represents the law of the household gods […] and […] Creon represents the law of the state.”40 According to Butler’s characterization of Hegel’s reading, the conflict between Antigone and Creon is resolved when, “kinship […] give[s] way to state authority as the final arbiter of justice.”41 Saxonhouse also roots Antigone firmly in the private sphere, arguing that her invocation of the uncreated and unwritten laws of nature and the gods stand opposed to the decrees of Creon that flow from a human intellect that controls the city.42 Butler, however, like Ward with respect to Socrates, argues that Antigone’s speech is actually quite political, expressing public and not simply private concerns. In justifying her

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defiance of Creon’s decree by appealing to divine law and the justice which flows from the gods, Antigone, according to Butler, “assumes the voice of the law in committing an act against the law,” and thus, “emerges in her criminality to speak in the name of politics and the law: she absorbs the very language of the state against which she rebels.”43 Butler also insightfully points out that in burying Polynices against Creon’s command that he go unburied and unmourned, Antigone, “refuses to obey any law that refuses public recognition of her loss.”44 I agree with Saxonhouse, Mill, Ward and Butler that Socrates and Antigone exercise a freedom of speech that critiques authority and is hence at the heart of democratic politics. Yet, when we turn to the texts of Plato and Sophocles below, we will see that there are also important ways in which Socrates and Antigone differ. In her invocation of the laws and ancient traditions of the gods, grounded in her desire to give the body of her dead brother proper burial, I argue that Antigone would more likely have been one of Socrates’ accusers in the Apology rather than his friend and defender. However, despite this opposition and her invocation of divine law and kinship loyalty, I argue that Antigone’s speech, perhaps surprisingly to Mill himself, would be more tolerated and valued in a modern democracy guided by Mill than a democratic polity guided by Socratic reason. Mill, fearing the rise of the tyranny of the majority as political institutions are democratized and the lack of legitimate opposition to public opinion once it is known, argues that “a strong barrier of moral conviction” must be raised against the power of society to impose its beliefs on individuals.45 What Mill suggests, in other words, is that in modernity the greatest danger to human flourishing is conformity, and hence what is needed is cultivating the opinion that all opinions are equally valid and encouraged in the search for individuality. With tolerance as the key virtue, Antigone’s speech of defiance, even though grounded in religion and family, would be valued simply for its difference or uniqueness from reigning norms, not necessarily for its “truth,” so to speak. Socrates, on the other hand, would more likely seek to show that Antigone’s pietistic and familial claims are wrong and not constitutive of the political sphere, rather than celebrate them as unique expressions of individuality. Socratic speech, in other words, is reflective of a classical political rationalism that may not be as accommodating as a modern, liberal toleration.

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Socrates and the questioning of authority Plato’s Apology of Socrates tells the story of the quest for selfknowledge. This story begins when Socrates, on trial for his life, denies the longstanding public opinion against him reflected in Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds, that he is a wise man who studies things in the heavens and under the earth, makes the weaker speech the stronger, and does not believe in gods (Apology, 18b-c, 19c). Socrates then raises the question that one of his reasonable listeners might ask given the opportunity: if this longstanding public opinion is wrong, where did your unique reputation for wisdom come from (Apology, 20c-d). In response to this hypothetical question, Socrates proceeds to give an autobiographical account of his quest for self-knowledge, beginning with the oracle given to his friend Chaerephon. Socrates reports that Chaerephon once went to Delphi and asked the oracle whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates. The Pythia, according to Socrates, “replied that no one was wiser” (Apology, 21a). Socrates’ initial response to the oracle is that the god Apollo has posed a riddle making it hard to understand what the god is saying. Socrates, contrary to the oracle, believes that he is “not at all wise, either much or little” (Apology, 21b). To discover the god’s meaning, Socrates sets out to refute the oracle and hence prove the god wrong. Socrates’ methodology in refuting the oracle involves questioning those in Athens reputed to be wise to show that they are in fact wiser than him, thus revealing the error of the god (Apology, 21b-c). In addition to the god Apollo himself, Socrates proceeds to question four other authorities within the city: the politicians, the poets, the artisans, and the fathers. Upon examination the politicians fail miserably to meet Socrates’ design. Having questioned one reputed to be wise, Socrates learns that this man is not as wise as he and his followers thought him to be. Socrates then tries to show him that he is not wise. Incurring the hatred of the politician and those present during the examination, Socrates concludes: I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he is in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know (Apology, 21d).

Socrates is thus wiser than the politicians because he has knowledge of his own ignorance, whereas they do not.

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After the politicians Socrates then questions the poets, “those of tragedies […] and the others, in order that there I would catch myself in the act of being more ignorant than they” (Apology 22b). It is possible to speculate that Socrates may have examined Sophocles at this time. The poets, however, like the politicians, fare badly under Socrates’ questions. Because the poets “do not make what they make by wisdom, but by some sort of nature and while inspired, like the diviners and those who deliver oracles,” they are not as wise as they think they are (Apology, 22c). Guided by passion, divine or otherwise, the poets cannot give a rational explanation of what their poems and tragedies mean. Another problem with the poets, according to Socrates, is that because they think they are wise with respect to their poetry, they also believe they are wise in “other things” also, but they are not (Apology, 22c). Socrates leaves the poets in the belief that he is wiser than they for the same reason he is wiser than the politicians: unlike the poets and the politicians, at least he knows what he doesn’t know, or has knowledge of ignorance. The artisans are the next authority within Athens that Socrates questions. They fare better than the politicians and the poets, proving wiser than Socrates in one respect: they at least have knowledge of their art or trade (Apology, 22d). However, the artisans suffer from the same problem as the poets; because they are wise in their trade, they believe themselves wisest in the “greatest” things (Apology, 22d). Although it is not explicitly stated, Socrates also questions the fathers of Athens.46 For instance, Socrates tells us that he questioned a father named Callias as to who had the knowledge to teach his sons the virtue of a human being and citizen. Having “paid more money to sophists than all the others,” Callias responds that the sophist Evenus of Paros has such knowledge (Apology, 20b). Socrates’ low opinion of this answer is indicated when he insists that he lacks the knowledge Evenus is said to have. More subtly, Socrates’ questioning of the fathers surfaces when he denies the longstanding slander against him reflected in Aristophanes’ Clouds. Socrates, speaking to the jury, claims that those who spread this slander, “got hold of the many of you from childhood” (Apology, 18b). Thus, refuting the slander, Socrates is refuting the fathers of the jurors sitting in judgment of his case. He thus calls into question the wisdom of the older generation. Like the young who imitate him and examine others, Socrates, considering the fathers, “discover[s] a great abundance of human beings who suppose they know something, but know little or nothing” (Apology, 23c-d). After his examination of the politicians, poets and artisans, Socrates, having intended to prove the god wrong, concludes that the god is right.

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He, Socrates, is the wisest human being, because he has knowledge of 1) his own ignorance, and 2) that, “really the god is wise, and that in this oracle he is saying that human wisdom is worth little or nothing” (Apology, 23a). Thus, as a result of his attempt to refute the oracle, Socrates gains knowledge not of his own ignorance, which he had prior to his investigations, but of universal human ignorance; human wisdom is worthless as only the god is wise. After addressing this longstanding public opinion concerning him and his philosophic challenges to the the city’s authorities, Socrates attempts to refute the present accusation that he corrupts the young and does not believe in the city’s gods but other, new daimonia (Apology, 24c). Apparently unsuccessful, Socrates is convicted and charged, and Meletus proposes death as the proper penalty (Apology, 36a-b). Arguing that he should get what he deserves, and this is something good, Socrates puts forward the incredibly audacious counter-proposal of free meals in the Prytaneum (Apology, 36d-e). Yet, he acknowledges that many in the jury may be perplexed that he does not propose exile. Socrates explains that if Athens, with its democracy and freedom of speech, cannot tolerate him no other city in Greece will and it would be no life for a man of his age to be driven from city to city (Apology, 37d-e). Socrates then raises the possibility that one of the jurors might ask, “if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking?” (Apology, 37e). Socrates is emphatic, however, that he cannot give up his unique way of speaking in order to make exile possible. The first reason Socrates gives for being unable to cease his philosophizing to make exile possible is that this would be to disobey the god (Apology, 38a). Throughout his defense speech Socrates has presented his philosophic activity of questioning the opinions of his fellow Athenians as his obedience to the god Apollo. At one point, Socrates even presents himself as “the gift of the god” to the city (Apology, 30e). According to Socrates, “the god seems to have set me upon the city as [a gadfly]: I awaken and persuade and reproach each one of you, and I do not stop setting down everywhere upon you the whole day” (Apology, 30e31a). Claiming that many in the jury will think he is being ironic and dismiss his reference to the god, Socrates gives an alternative explanation for why he will not stop philosophizing. Socrates asserts that it is, “a very great good for a human being—to make speeches every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me conversing and examining both myself and others” (Apology, 38a). The goodness of the life of rational inquiry into the self through dialogue with others means that for

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Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living for [human beings]” (Apology, 38a). In arguing that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates seems to be accepting death rather than cease his philosophic way of life. Further indication that Socrates accepts death can be found in his third and final speech to the jury after being given the death sentence. Socrates denies that what has happened to him is a bad thing. Rather, Socrates argues that being dead is a very great good for a human being (Apology, 40c). The evidence Socrates gives for this argument is that his daimon or divine sign, a voice which always turns him away from something but never forward, did not oppose anything he said that day (Apology, 31d, 40c). Moreover, Socrates argues that the afterlife—being dead—is actually a highly desirable state (Apology, 40c).47 To convince his listeners of the desirability of being dead, Socrates paints two images of the afterlife. In the first, death is envisioned as an endless, dreamless sleep (Apology, 40d). If this condition were true, Socrates declares, “death would be a wondrous gain” (Apology, 40d). In the second image death is envisioned as a migration of the soul from this world to Hades (Apology, 40e). In Hades Socrates’ soul would be able to examine the souls of all the great judges, law-givers, poets, and heroes of the past, discovering “who among them is wise, and who supposes he is, but is not” (Apology, 41b). Of this state Socrates says, “[t]o converse and associate with [these souls] and to examine them there would be inconceivable happiness” (Apology 41c).48 The presentation of Socrates’ philosophic quest for knowledge of self and other as that which can lead to “inconceivable happiness” even in death, suggests that Plato supports Socrates’ belief that “the unexamined life is not worth living for [human beings]” (Apology, 38a). The uncompromising search for truth is the only fully human life; it is better to die than to live without it.

Antigone and the burial of Polynices In Sophocles’ Antigone, the story of the fate of the house of Oedipus continues. After Oedipus’ death, a quarrel over power-sharing arises between his male heirs, Eteocles and Polynices. Unresolved, Polynices leaves Thebes and returns at the head of an invading Argive army to retake his share in rule. Both brothers die in battle at each other’s hands on the same day, Eteocles defending Thebes and Polynices attacking it. Rule devolves onto Creon, brother of Jocasta, Oedipus’ wife and mother, and uncle to Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone and Ismene.

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As the play opens, we learn that Creon’s first act as ruler is to decree that Polynices go unburied and unmourned (Antigone, 30-35). Creon explains and justifies his decree, commonly characterized in the play as law, in his first speech to the Chorus, an assembled group of elder Theban citizens (see Antigone, 53, 239, 497). In this speech Creon asserts, “our country is our safety,” and that, “whoever places a friend above the good of his own country, he is nothing” (Antigone, 203-04, 211). Creon thus implies that it is the city that gives us life and security, and hence is our true parent or real family, meaning that a fellow citizen is closer to us than any biological relative or friend can be. Creon, going further, claims that only when the city, “voyages true on course can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself” (Antigone, 212-13). He then reiterates his decree that Eteocles, “who died fighting for Thebes,” will be buried “with a hero’s honors,” whereas Polynices, “who thirsted to drink his kinsmen’s blood and sell the rest to slavery,” shall go unburied, “his corpse carrion for the birds and dogs to tear, an obscenity for the citizens to behold” (Antigone, 218-20, 225-26, 229-31). Creon explains at the end of his speech that, “[n]ever at my hands will the traitor be honored above the patriot. But whoever proves his loyalty to the state—I’ll prize that man in death as well as life” (Antigone, 231-35). Even after death, it appears, it is important to maintain the political distinction between patriot and traitor. Creon thus invokes the duty of an intense patriotism or dedication to one’s city and its rulers that overrides any possible familial and filial attachments. Later on in the play, when confronted with Antigone’s public justification for her defiance, Creon goes so far as to claim that he will kill his own blood relatives rather than see his decree disobeyed and the distinction between patriot and traitor undermined (Antigone, 543-48). Yet, what about the gods, in obedience to whom Antigone claims she will bury Polynices? Is not this a higher loyalty than the city and its human law? After hearing of the first unseen and hurried burial of Polynices’ corpse from the Sentry, the Chorus asks Creon, “My king […] could this possibly be the work of the gods?” (Antigone, 314-15). Creon, however, angrily responds, “Stop—before you make me choke with anger—the gods! […] Exactly when did you last see the gods celebrating traitors? Inconceivable?” (Antigone, 316-27). For Creon it is ludicrous to think that the gods would care for a traitor or fail to make a distinction between one who died fighting for his city and one who died fighting against it. The gods, Creon indicates, support the city and its rulers, meaning that there can be no distinction between divine law and human law upon which one can base one’s opposition to the city’s laws.49

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Before Creon’s speech we learn that Antigone intends to act against his decree and bury Polynices herself. She initially asks her sister Ismene for help, but Ismene appears to decline (Antigone, 44-59, 66-81). Although, as discussed previously, some scholars argue that Ismene actually carries out the first secret burial of Polynices’ body, it is agreed that Antigone carries out the second burial (Antigone, 469-79). As the play unfolds approximately four reasons are articulated by Antigone for why she acts against Creon’s decree in this way, knowing that the penalty is death (Antigone, 42). The first is loyalty to family. At the beginning of the play Ismene asks Antigone, “You’d bury him—when a law forbids the city?” Antigone responds, “Yes! He is my brother […] no one will ever convict me for a traitor” (Antigone, 53-56). It appears that for Antigone, who opens the play referring to her sister Ismene as, “[m]y own flesh and blood,” loyalty to family or biological relatives is more important than obedience to the city’s laws. Thus, in contrast to Creon’s claims, Antigone indicates that the family is a human group more important than the city and its political distinction between patriot and traitor, and gives justification to the individual for being at odds with their city. Connected to her loyalty to family is Antigone’s loyalty to the gods and their laws that she believes provide her second justification for defying Creon’s command.50 After being captured in the act of burying Polynices’ body, Antigone is brought before Creon to whom she confirms that she knew of the decree forbidding such burial. In response to Creon’s question, “And you still had the gall to break this law?”, Antigone says: Of course I did. It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation—not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. They are alive, not just today or yesterday: they live forever, from the first of time, and no one knows when they first saw the light. These laws, I was not about to break them, not out of fear of some man’s wounded pride, and face the retribution of the gods (Antigone, 498-511).

Like Socrates who appeals to the god Apollo at Delphi, Antigone makes a pietistic appeal to the gods understood as distinct from the city and its laws to critique and act against the authority of the city. Moreover, for Antigone who, unlike Creon, believes divine law is higher than human law and the source of real justice, the laws of the gods are unwritten and pre-rational, as it were. In this case divine law, commanding burial for all, is indifferent to the political distinction between patriot and traitor and affirms our universal character as human, involving submission to the

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gods and emotional connection to biological family members; our human sameness seems to take precedence over our citizenship. The third motive for Antigone’s defiance of Creon’s law, as discussed above, appears to be her desire for glory or fame. Before doing the deed, Antigone asks Ismene to, “shout it from the rooftops,” and to, “leave me to my absurdity, leave me to suffer this—dreadful thing. I will suffer nothing as great as death without glory” (Antigone, 100, 111-13). After being caught and sentenced to death by Creon, she pleads with Creon to leave Ismene alive and kill her quickly, claiming, “[y]our moralizing repels me […] Enough. Give me glory! What greater glory could I win than to give my own brother decent burial?” (Antigone, 557-62). Why does Antigone think she will earn glory for burying Polynices’ body? Going back to Ismene’s initial attempt to dissuade Antigone out of such an act of defiance, among several things she says, “[r]emember, we are women, we’re not born to contend with men. Then too we’re underlings, ruled by much stronger hands, so we must submit in this, and things still worse” (Antigone, 74-77). It would appear, therefore, that Antigone believes she will earn glory in doing and speaking the deed because, despite being a woman meant to serve men, she excercises a manly and independent free will against Creon’s wish that Polynices’ go unburied. The final reason for Antigone’s defiance comes to the surface near the end of the play. Being led to the cave on the side of the mountain where she is to be entombed and suffer a slow death by starvation, Antigone, in her last speech, re-examines, almost to herself, her motives for her actions. Surprisingly, she claims: Never, I tell you, if I had been the mother of children or if my husband died, exposed and rotting—I’d never have taken this ordeal upon myself, never defied our people’s will. What law, you ask, do I satisfy with what I say? A husband dead, there might have been another. A child by another too, if I had lost the first. But mother and father both lost in the halls of Death, no brother could ever spring to light again (Antigone, 995-1004).

Antigone, facing her death chamber, admits she would not have defied Creon for a husband or children, but only for a brother who cannot be replaced since both parents are dead. Leaving aside the possible incoherence of Antigone’s reasoning—her brother Polynices is already dead and she is not saving him or bringing him back to life or getting another brother— this motive seems to be at odds with the first two reasons she gives for defying Creon’s decree. With respect to loyalty to biological family, although Polynices is her biological brother what could be closer to a woman in terms of blood than her own children that come out of her own

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body? Could it be that Antigone does not want to marry her intended, Haemon, Creon’s son, and have children with him? Ismene did implore Antigone that as women they would have to submit to things still worse than obeying Creon in not burying Polynices’ body. With respect to her second reason for defying Creon, would not piety or obedience to divine law require that a husband and children also be given proper burial if, according to the gods, all human beings deserve this treatment upon death? If Antigone does not act primarily for reasons of family or piety, why does she bury Polynices? Perhaps in the final analysis, as Butler suggests, truly her father’s daughter Antigone is driven by her incestuous love for her brother.51 She would prefer to lie with a dead brother than to marry the living man apparently chosen for her. Evidence for this occurs in the opening line of her last speech when she compares her tomb to her bridal chamber, and using very erotic language toward both dead brothers, she says she hopes her death is, “dear to you, my loving brother Eteocles— When you died I washed you with my hands, I dressed you all, I poured the sacred cups across your tombs. But now, Polynices, because I laid your body out as well, this, this is my reward” (Antigone, 988-93). Antigone asks the gods just before her entombment what law of theirs she has transgressed such that it is their pleasure that she suffer death for her deed (Antigone, 1013-18). Yet, prior to this both the Chorus and Antigone herself suggest that she chooses or at least accepts death rather than obey Creon’s decree, and indicates that death will be a great gain. Thus, when Creon advises the Chorus never to side with those, like Antigone, who disobey his orders, they respond, “only a fool could be in love with death” (Antigone, 246). In response to Ismene’s plea to let her die with her, Antigone says, “You chose to live, I chose to die” (Antigone, 626). Perhaps most emphatically, Antigone asserts during her first speech to Creon defending her actions as obedience to divine law, that: Die I must, I’ve known it all my life—how could I keep from knowing?— even without your death sentence ringing in my ears. And if I am to die before my time I consider that a gain. Who on earth, alive in the midst of so much grief as I, could fail to find his death a rich reward (Antigone, 512-18).

Ancient Rationalism, Modern Individuality In this brief summation of Antigone’s motives we can see important similarities with Socrates in Plato’s Apology. Both Antigone and Socrates appeal to divine authority to act against and critique in speech the authorities of their city. Moreover, both Antigone and Socrates appear to

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accept death as the price of doing so. Yet, despite these important similarities, there are also significant differences between the two. First, unlike Antigone who would rather die than see the corpse of her brother go unburied, Socrates acknowledges that in order to persuade his fellow citizens to behave virtuously has has not cared for the things of his family (Apology, 31b). Second, Socrates may not actually be as robustly pious or dedicated to the gods as Antigone is. For instance, upon first learning of the oracle given to Chaerephon that no one is wiser than he, Socrates tries to refute the oracle. The means by which Socrates proceeds with his attempted refutation—questioning the reputedly wise men of Athens to show that they are wiser than he—does not appear to be commanded by the god but is rather Socrates’ own device.52 Also, even if Socrates eventually comes to accept the correctness of the oracle, he does not do so simply on its authority as divine, but only after it passes the test of his own rational inquiry into its truth. Thus, unlike Antigone who appeals to mysterious and non-rational divine commands, for Socrates revelation must be made consistent with reason if the word of the god is to be accepted as true. We can further question Socrates’ obedience or loyalty to the traditional gods of his city when we consider his direct response to the present accusation of, “not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things” (Apology, 24c). Socrates’ primary method of answering this charge is to confuse Meletus and get him to contradict himself by asking, “[do] you mean that I teach that there are some gods […] not, however, the gods in whom the city believes, but others, […] Or [do] you mean that I do not believe in gods at all, and that this is what I teach to others” (Apology, 26c). Meletus asserts that he means to charge Socrates with the second alternative, that he is an atheist, offering as proof that Socrates believes and teaches to others that the sun and moon are not gods, as most Athenians believe, but stone and earth respectively. Socrates attempts to refute this charge in two ways. First, he claims that it is Anaxagoras who teaches and writes that the sun is stone and the moon is earth, not him (Apology, 26d-e). Second, he points out that if, as in Meletus’ written indictment, he believes in other new spiritual things or daimonia—children of gods—he must also believe in spirits or gods from whom their children come (Apology, 27d-e). Meletus has thus contradicted himself and is incoherent in his charge. It is important to note, however, that Socrates never argues in this exchange with Meletus that Anaxagoras is wrong in teaching that the sun and moon are not gods, but simply asserts that Anaxagoras is the source of this opinion. Moreover, Socrates later characterizes the daimonian referred to by Meletus in his

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indictment as a voice that has come to him since childhood that, when it speaks, always turns him away from something he is about to do but never forward (Apology, 31d). If we do not believe that Socrates has actually introduced a new god into the city with his daimonian, we can suspect from this exchange with Meletus that Socrates does not in fact believe in the gods in whom the city believes. Antigone, therefore, who appeals to such gods to act against and critique the city’s ruler, would perhaps more likely be one of Socrates’ accusers at his trial rather than a defender. Further indication that Socrates does not believe in the gods in whom his fellow citizens and Antigone appear to believe surfaces in Socrates’ account of his actions during the trial of the generals who led the naval battle at Arginusae. In an effort to explain why he has not actively sought public office and to illustrate that he fears injustice more than death, Socrates harkens back to the one instance in which he served on the council as one of the 50 prytanies chosen by lot from his tribe Antiochus, who were responsible for administering to and chairing the Assembly. This single instance of official public service coincided with, “the time when you wanted to try as a body the ten generals who had failed to pick up the survivors of the naval battle. This was illegal, as you all recognized later” (Apology, 32b). Socrates here refers to the actions of those commanding the Athenian fleet at the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C., and the reaction of the Athenian public to the military measures taken. After winning a major victory over Spartan and allied forces, the generals in command split the Athenian fleet, taking the bulk of their ships to chase and hopefully destroy the Spartan fleet while leaving the remainder to rescue the wounded and retrieve the bodies of the dead from the water.53 However, a violent storm arose preventing those tasked to do so from rescuing the survivors and the fallen. When the Athenians discovered what had happened they were furious and, stirred up by demagogues, were persuaded to ignore the law guaranteeing every individual their day in court and try the generals as a group, ensuring swift conviction and execution. Socrates now reminds his hearers: I was the only member of the presiding committee to oppose your doing something contrary to the laws, and I voted against it. The orators were ready to prosecute me and take me away, and your shouts were egging them on, but I thought I should run any risk on the side of the law and justice rather than join you, for fear of prison and death, when you were engaged in an unjust course (Apology, 32b-c).

Although Socrates does not address directly the motives of the Athenians at the time of the trial and execution of the generals, it is worth

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considering why they were persuaded to break the law in this instance. Why were the Athenians so angry at the generals? Military considerations could not have been at the root of their anger as the generals had been victorious over the Spartans and the plan to damage or destroy the enemy fleet surely would have served the pubic good of Athens. If not military considerations it would appear that emotional considerations were fueling the outrage of the Athenian public. More specifically, the actions of the generals after the victory prevented the Athenians from giving their loved ones proper burial; their fathers, sons, husbands and brothers were left in the sea to become food for fish. Not only tearing into the emotional ties between family members, such actions also prevented the Athenians from observing the proper religious rites of burial due to the dead and apparently commanded by the gods. It would appear, therefore, that certain familial and pietistic concerns, centered around the proper behavior toward dead bodies, was at the root of Athenian fury.54 What does it mean that Socrates did not share this fury, opposing the multitude in his failed attempt to have the generals tried individually? Individual trials would undoubtedly have slowed the process down allowing for calm, rational reflection to eventually replace the passionate fury felt by the Athenians. On a deeper level, it would appear that Socrates, sympathizing with and defending the generals, does not share the anger that his fellow Athenians feel at being denied the ability to give their dead friends and loved ones a proper burial. Socrates, it seems, adheres to a rational commitment to civil law and military necessity against the passionate commitment to blood ties and the pietistic desire to bury the dead in observance of divine law.55 Where would Antigone stand if she were in Athens at this time? Burying Polynices because he is her brother and it is required by the mysterious and timeless laws of the gods, Antigone would no doubt share the fury of the Athenians toward the generals who left the bodies of their loved ones in the water as food for fish. Moreover, in preventing proper burial of the dead, the generals, defended by Socrates, act toward the Athenians, even if more justified in doing so, as Creon acts toward Antigone. Thus, even if, at bottom, Antigone’s incestuous love may be at the root of her actions, in being denied the ability to bury the body of her brother Antigone would still more likely be an accuser of Socrates rather than his defender. Despite this possible tension between Socrates and Antigone and in an alternative to Mill’s own reading of Socratic dialectics, Antigone, I believe, would more likely find a home in a modern, liberal democracy infused with the principles of Mill than Socrates would. If we recall, Mill’s chief concern is the social tyranny or enforced conformity imposed by

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public opinion on individuals as institutions are increasingly democratized. Given this threat, Mill advocates and defends a near absolute freedom of speech that will ground innovative and unique ways of thinking and living. Tolerance, or the treating of all opinions as equally valid, becomes the key virtue as individuality is promoted against society’s attempt to impose its beliefs and codes of conduct on its members. In this sense, even though she appeals to familial and religious conceptions of the good, Antigone’s actions and speech in defiance of Creon and her incestuous desire for her brother would be embraced and celebrated in a “Millian” democracy as expressions of individuality against reigning norms.56 Is Socratic philosophy, although premised on the freedom of speech, about the search for individuality, as in Mill? Or, is it about the search for truth? It would appear that the latter is the case, as Socratic questioning seems to aim not simply at ensuring that one’s opinions are unique and one’s own, but rather that they come closer to approximating the truth than they did before. For instance, in the Apology when Socrates questions the politicians, poets and artisans, he is not simply trying to show them and his fellow Athenians that all opinions are equally valid but rather that some opinions are wrong; the politicians, poets and artisans do not know what they think they know. Again, when Socrates indicates that one should fear doing injustice more than death, he does not seem uncertain about the truth of this opinion. Finally, Socrates asserts to the jury that the trial and judicial murder of the generals at Arginusae was simply wrong and should not have happened, not that it was a valuable expression of their own unique understanding of justice. For Socrates, the desire to bury the bodies of the dead stemming from passion for our loved ones and pietistic concern for divine law, when appropriate needs to be subordinated to the rationalism of military necessity. Socrates, in other words, exercises a classical rationalism that seeks to show erroneous opinions as erroneous, or perhaps would reveal Antigone’s concern for Polynices’ dead body as misguided and not properly constitutive of the public sphere.

References Baracchi, Claudia. “The ‘Inconceivable Happiness’ of ‘Men and Women’: Visions of Another World in Plato’s Apology of Socrates.” Comparative Literature Studies 43/3 (2006): 269-284. Butler, Judith. Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life & Death. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

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Kirkpatrick, Jennet. “The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles’ Antigone.” The Review of Politics 73/3 (Summer 2011): 401-424. Leibowitz, David. The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Meltzer, Francoise. “Theories of Desire: Antigone Again.” Critical Inquiry 37/2 (Winter 2011): 169-186. Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. London: Penguin Classics, 1974. Plato. Apology of Socrates, in Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002. Robert, William. “Antigone’s Nature.” Hypatia 25/2 (Spring 2010): 412436. Saxonhouse, Arlene W. Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. —. Fear of Diversity: The Birth of Political Science in Ancient Greek Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Sjoholm, Cecilia. The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Sophocles. Antigone in The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 1984. Strauss, Leo. “On Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito.” In Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Ward, Ann. Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008. Ward, Lee. “The Relation between Politics and Philosophy in Plato’s Apology of Socrates.” International Philosophical Quarterly 49/4 (Decmber, 2009): 501-519. Zuckert, Catherine H. Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Zuckert, Michael. “Rationalism and Political Responsibility: Just Speech and Just Deed in the Clouds and the Apology of Socrates.” Polity 17/2 (1984): 271-297.

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Notes 1

Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6-7, 12. 2 Saxonhouse, Free Speech, 2, 6; also see Ann Ward, Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 108-09, 121-22, 125, 129). 3 Saxonhouse, Free Speech, 5, 7. 4 Saxonhouse, Free Speech, 8. 5 Saxonhouse, Free Speech, 8. 6 Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity: The Birth of Political Science in Ancient Greek Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 52, 64, 6869, 71, 76. 7 Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 51. 8 Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 52. 9 Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life & Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 9; also see Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 69. 10 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 10; but see William Robert, “Antigone’s Nature,” Hypatia 25/2 (Spring 2010), 413-14. 11 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 23; also see Robert, “Antigone’s Nature,” 416, and Cecilia Sjoholm, The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 102-06. 12 Sophocles, Antigone, in Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays, Robert Fagles trans. (New York: Penguin Books), 1982. All subsequent citations will be taken from this edition. 13 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 10-11. 14 Jennet Kirkpatrick, “The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles’ Antigone,” The Review of Politics 73/3 (Summer 2011), 402-03. 15 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: Penguin Classics, 1974), 59, 63. 16 Mill, On Liberty, 63, 70. 17 Mill, On Liberty, 68-69. 18 Mill, On Liberty, 71. 19 Mill, On Liberty, 77 20 Mill, On Liberty, 84. 21 Mill, On Liberty,79. 22 Mill, On Liberty, 102. 23 Mill, On Liberty, 108. 24 Mill, On Liberty, 110. 25 Mill, On Liberty, 106. 26 Mill, On Liberty,106. 27 Mill, On Liberty, 106-07. 28 Plato, Apology of Socrates, in Five Dialogues, G.M.A. Grube trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.), 2002. All subsequent citations will be taken from this edition.

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29 Catherine H. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 744. 30 Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 743. 31 Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 743. 32 Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 741. 33 Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 741. 34 Lee Ward, “The Relation between Politics and Philosophy in Plato’s Apology of Socrates,” International Philosophical Quarterly 49/4 (December 2009), 517. 35 Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 503-05. 36 Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 503. 37 Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 502. 38 Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 507, 509. 39 Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 509. 40 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 2-4; also see Robert, “Antigone’s Nature,” 418. 41 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 4-5. 42 Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity,68-69. 43 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 5, 11. 44 Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 24. 45 Mill, On Liberty, 73-74. 46 See Claudia Baracchi, “The ‘Inconceivable Happiness’ of ‘Men and Women’: Visions of Another World in Plato’s Apology of Socrates,” Comparative Literature Studies 43/3 (2006), 278-79. 47 But see David Leibowitz, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 169, 171. 48 Also see Baracchi, “Inconceivable Happiness,” 281-82. 49 But see Robert, “Antigone’s Nature,” 415. 50 Also see Francoise Melzer, “Theories of Desire: Antigone Again,” Critical Inquiry 37/2 (Winter 2011), 171, 173, 179-80, 185. 51 Butler, Antigone’s Claim,16, 18, 23. 52 See Leibowitz, Ironic Defense of Socrates, 64-65, 87, 101, Baracchi, “Inconceivable Happiness,” 277-78, Saxonhouse, Free Speech,106-09, Michael Zuckert, “Rationalism and Political Responsibility: Just Speech and Just Deed in the Clouds and the Apology of Socrates,” Polity 17/2 (1984), 283-87, and Leo Strauss, “On Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983), 42, 44; but see Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 504. 53 See Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 506. 54 Also see Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 507-08. 55 See Ward, “Politics and Philosophy,” 508-09. 56 Also see Sjoholm, The Antigone Complex, 108.

CHAPTER FIVE THE PLATONIC REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY1 ROBERT A. BALLINGALL

Introduction Plato is well known for the critique of traditional poetry found above all in the Republic. This critique singles out tragedy for special reproach, being the target of Socrates’s “greatest accusation” (605c6),2 and is echoed elsewhere in the corpus (e.g., Gorg. 502a-c, Minos 321a-b). It therefore comes as a surprise to read of the rehabilitation of tragedy in an important passage of the Laws (817a-d). There, an Athenian stranger asks his Dorian interlocutors how they might aptly respond to the entreaties of tragic poets from abroad hoping to practice their art within the city. As is often the case in the Laws, the scene asks to be compared with an analogous episode from the Republic (398a-b). Like Socrates in that dialogue, the Athenian in the Laws stresses the need to harmonize the arts with the ethical aspirations of the regime. He duly counsels that the foreign tragedians be refused a chorus, unless their works can be shown either to agree with the regime’s civic education or to improve upon it (817d6). But he goes further than Socrates, proclaiming the regime he has persuaded his companions to found—not merely in speech, but in deed as well (702ad)—to be an “imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy” (817b3-5).3 As would-be lawgivers, he and his companions are poets themselves, he says. They are “rivals” of the traditional tragedians, “artists and performers of the most beautiful drama, which true law alone can by nature bring to completion— as we hope” (817b6-c1). In having the philosophical persona of the work utter these (apparently adulatory) words, does Plato take back the Socratic disparagement of tragedy? Or does tragedy’s rehabilitation in the Laws

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somehow comprehend the Socratic critique? What is ultimately at stake in determining the appropriate orientation to tragedy anyway?4 This chapter argues that the identification of the regime with tragedy in the Laws does in fact comprehend the critique of tragedy in the Republic. To call the regime a tragedy, then, however beautiful, is quietly to insult it. Indeed, since the regime in question is associated with the way of life that is best for mere “human beings” (Laws 853c3-7, cf. 739a4-5, d5-e1),5 insulting it is to disparage “human” life itself. Doing so might seem surprising, but it keeps faith with the sombre tone of the dialogue (cf. 803b3-8, 804b3-6). More explicitly than the Republic, the Laws makes concessions to human nature. The regime it brings to light is avowedly “second-best” (739a4-5, 875d3-5), an “imitation” (713b3, 817b4) that shamefully falls short of its model (853b4-c3). It is of some importance, then, that the reason the Athenian adduces for this shortcoming is closely related to, if not identical with, the reason Socrates cites for the problematic appeal of tragedy. On Socrates’s presentation, tragedy invites the sympathy of its audience to the spectacle of human suffering (Rep. 605c10-d5). But the suffering that it represents depends on false beliefs about what is ultimately good and bad. To sympathize with tragic representations, then, is to reinforce these false beliefs. The Athenian does not explicitly connect such beliefs to tragedy in the Laws,6 but he does openly lament their appeal. Human beings, he says, are inclined by nature to identify happiness with “human” goods such as health, beauty, strength, wealth, tyrannical power, and immortality (631c1-4, 661a5-b4, cf. 661d6-e5). For the Athenian, as for Socrates, attraction to such goods is bound up with attachment to one’s individual existence. Human goods are related to self-love and the pleasures of the body, the thing that is most one’s own and that can least be held in common.7 But since the virtues on which the city relies look to the common ahead of private advantage (875a5-b7), they seem to stand in painful tension with private happiness. They seem to demand the transcendence of natural self-love. This is especially true where virtue is misrecognized or otherwise unrewarded with human goods. It is true above all where circumstances conspire to thwart virtuous action itself, along with its external rewards. Because the attraction of tragedy is owing to how it recognizes and solemnizes the suffering that this tension creates, the pleasure that tragedy affords is politically dangerous. It confirms the austere appearance of the virtues and the indifference or even malevolence of the larger whole in which human life is led (cf. Rep. 363e-64b). The Athenian duly agrees with the Socratic proposal to censor the tragic arts. But in keeping with his dramatic role as a teacher of lawgivers,

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he is more realistic about the ethical payoffs of doing so. He does not foresee citizens for whom virtue and happiness are harmonious ends and who might therefore be entrusted with self-government or significant personal authority. Rather, he stresses the importance of persuading citizens that they misapprehend the virtues from the start, especially justice (663b-c). He allows that the just things must inevitably seem painful limits to the happiness sought by non-philosophers, even if the lawgiver must teach that justice is a necessary condition of happiness (631b7-c1, 661b4-c5).8 He therefore implies that citizens will always be attracted by the spectacle of tragic suffering. The city might suppress this spectacle and uphold a more edifying poetry. It might represent to the citizen a cosmos that is, despite appearances, hospitable to both human happiness and the political virtues at once. But the regime will always be vulnerable to the re-emergence of the tragic dispensation. My suggestion in what follows is that the regime for which the Athenian calls is itself a tragedy because it proves unable to eliminate this potential threat. It imitates the life that is “most beautiful and best,” the life in which virtue and happiness really are in consonance. But that life is beyond the ordinary human allotment. It belongs to gods, or perhaps to certain godlike men. As for the mortal beings who might lead the secondbest way of life, they must believe that life to come nearer the divine than it really does. They must have hope that the virtues they practice really do harmonize with the happiness they would seek. They must take themselves and their way of life more seriously that they deserve. And the reason they must do so—their being attracted inexorably to bodily, “human” goods— is the very reason for tragedy’s enduring appeal.

The Human Puppet and its Tragic Flaw We can begin to appreciate how Plato leads us towards this reading by returning to the passage with which we began (Laws 817a-d). The first thing to notice about this passage is that the relative pronoun ho (817b4) introducing the relative clause (“which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy”) is in the neuter. Strictly speaking, then, the antecedent to which the relative clause refers can be neither “our…regime” (politeia, which is masculine), nor the most beautiful and best “way of life” (bios, which is feminine). Rather, the relative clause must refer to the entire preceding idea.9 The “truest tragedy” must be the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, of which the regime discussed in the Laws is an example.10 This point has important repercussions if we follow another of Plato’s invitations. His Athenian does not say what it is about

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imitating the most beautiful and best way of life that suffuses it with tragedy. But he does supply us a clue. At 817a2-3, while introducing his thought-experiment, he refers to “our [Athenian] tragic poets” as “what they [the Athenians] call the ‘serious’ poets.”12 This echoes references to tragic poets in the Laws and elsewhere as those who are “serious,” those who claim to pronounce on the genuinely serious things (ta spoudaia).13 Earlier in Book Seven, in fact, the Athenian had laid down a kind of sermon on the serious. When we attend to this sermon and the passages leading up to it, we notice that they explain why the city’s second-best imitation must be founded on a false hope and must, for that reason, be a tragedy. One makes this discovery by reflecting on how these passages revisit the topic of education, despite the fact that it had already been addressed at length in Books One and Two. Here in Book Seven, it becomes clear that revisiting education is necessary because the Dorians are taking the cityin-speech rather more seriously than it deserves. It is true that the Athenian had first hit on civic education in an attempt to illuminate the “serious goal” (659e) of the political art, which he had identified as the “consonance [that] in its entirety is virtue” (653b).14 But he had also been careful to identify merely civic education with “being correctly trained as regards pleasures and pains” (653b-c). He will now make explicit what had earlier only been implied: that the political life for which civic education prepares its pupils is not a very serious thing after all, at least compared with the life of the gods or “god” (cf. 897b) whom the city would revere. Despite his exhortations to emulate “the god” (416c), the Athenian does not expect ordinary citizens to acquire the god’s virtues, the “divine” goods that stand above and redeem the “human” (631b). This is most obvious in the stress he places on deference to the external authority of “ancient things,” of law, and of magistrates, as well as in the threats he recommends the lawgiver employ. In the midst of the long prelude to the regime as a whole, he claims that the lawgiver should use “praise and blame [to] educate [citizens] so that they become more obedient and welldisposed to the laws” (730b). Accordingly, “the great man in the city, the man who is to be proclaimed perfect and the bearer of victory in virtue” is not the citizen whose resemblance to the god endows him with rational self-government. The “virtuous” citizen is rather “the one who does what he can to assist the magistrates in inflicting punishment” (730d).15 Nor would the lawgiver secure obedience through consensus among virtuous agents. The Athenian does not foresee voluntary adherence to the regime’s “true law” out of rational insight into the virtues’ intrinsic merit. Rather,

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the lawgiver must have recourse to the promise of those “human” goods that bring pleasure and release from pain (732e-34e), as well as to threats of opprobrium and violence. The Athenian is not above extolling vigilante “beatings” (plƝgai) of transgressors of certain laws (e.g. 762c-d) and will recommend harsh dishonour for others, whose shameful acts are often to be recorded for the sake of posterity, even in some cases “for the rest of time” (741c7). It is against this background of descent or retreat that the Stranger takes up education a second time and ultimately comes to the topic of tragedy.16 That his purpose is to reassess the seriousness of civic education is revealed only gradually, however. Initially, he justifies his return to this topic on the grounds that “things were omitted” from its initial treatment (796e). He seems to be referring here to the importance of what he calls “the character of games” (to tǀn paidiǀn genos, 797a7) in determining “whether the established laws will persist.” Innovation in children’s play will lead to innovation in the city’s way of life (798c-d), so the lawgiver who would avoid innovation must follow the Egyptians in sanctifying games, must exhort citizens to treat “playing” with the utmost seriousness. Curiously, this explanation makes sense only if one has forgotten how education was addressed initially. Indeed, the Athenian had placed children’s games and “play” at the centre of his reformulation of the Dorians’ gymnastic-based pedagogy in Books One and Two. “The core of education,” he had then proclaimed, “is a correct nurture, one which, as much as possible, draws the soul of the child at play toward an erotic attachment to what he must do when he becomes a man…” (643d, cf. 653b). In Book Two, he had also called attention to the same Egyptian method of sanctifying music as a way of protecting “the correct play” from unwanted innovations (657c). By Book Seven, then, the argument has hardly “omitted” discussion of “the character of games” and the need to conserve those deemed “correct.” Rather, it has already addressed these things directly and at length. Another surprising feature of the return to education is the wariness the Athenian affects in initiating it. “Even though you’ve listened before,” he warns, “care must be taken now too, as something very strange and uncustomary is spoken and heard. For I’m going to present an argument that is somewhat frightening to utter; yet becoming bold, somehow, I will not flinch” (797a). Given that he has already spoken of the need to take play “seriously,” and that then, as now, the Dorians had heartily welcomed his proposal to sanctify children’s games with an unremitting conservatism, one wonders why the Athenian now conveys such grave trepidation.

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My suggestion is that the Stranger is playing his own serious game with his Dorian companions. To make the action of his speech with them consonant with its content, he uncovers the extent to which Kleinias and Megillus have not followed the descent that he has made since proclaiming politics “the art whose business it is to care for souls” (650b). The Dorians’ cluelessness about this descent attests to the very limitations that had made it necessary. This bit of dialogic artistry becomes apparent when we consider the two moments in Book Seven where the Athenian elicits from his companions a shameful assent to a strategically placed question. As we shall see, the trepidation the Athenian affects at 797a actually refers to the new status that he will assign the political art in view of the limitations that he uncovers in his interlocutors, and especially to his efforts at revealing something of this status to those who are, like them, in the grip of such hindrances. Although he has already discussed Egyptianizing children’s games and rendering law immutable, only now does addressing these topics become “somewhat frightening to utter.” Only now does the Athenian venture openly to cast the putatively serious business of public affairs as a series of “games,” not merely in the sense of the pleasurable activities of children, but also in the sense of the low and trivial. The first such moment occurs at 792b-c when the Athenian manages to provoke Kleinias into agreeing that one should “apply every device in an attempt to make the three year period for our nurslings contain the least possible of suffering and fears and every sort of pain” (792b4-6). The Athenian had begun the Book by discussing gymnastics, in the course of which he had introduced a novel policy of physical exercise for expectant mothers, infants, and young children. The point of this policy had appeared to be twofold. First, by introducing from the very earliest age exercises that ostensibly harmonize with the civic virtues to be cultivated later in life, the lawgiver might improve the ethical prospects of adult citizens. Second, the lawgiver might “mold” the nurselings to be receptive to courage in particular by alleviating the terror to which the very young are accustomed. The Athenian duly recommends continuous rocking motions which he claims would assuage “the fear and mad motion within” (791a2-3), on the supposition that “every soul that dwells with terror from time of childhood would be especially likely to become accustomed to feeling fear; and presumably everyone would assert that this is practice in cowardice rather than courage” (791b5-8). The reader is already aware that something is amiss here inasmuch as he recalls the Athenian’s eagerness in Book One to extol a fictitious “fear drug.”17 There, the Athenian had claimed that courage is cultivated precisely by becoming accustomed to feeling fear, in what he had called a “gymnastic exercise

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against fear” (648d3, cf. 3.694d-96a). But Kleinias has already forgotten that early part of the conversation and now falls headlong into the Athenian’s trap. He agrees not only that one should limit the pain and terror the nurseling feels, but adds that “clearly” it would be best “if one should provide many pleasures for it” (791b9-c1). In a startling about-face, the Athenian seizes on this casual remark and makes a point of harshly disavowing it: “In this I would no longer go along with Kleinias, you amazing man! That kind of behaviour is for us the greatest of all corruptions” (792c2-4). The Stranger then uses the opportunity he has contrived to remind his companions and readers that “the correct way of life should neither pursue pleasures nor entirely flee pains” (792c9-d1) and adds that “this is how we all characterize precisely the situation of the god” (792d4-5). The Athenian has shown Kleinias to be at odds with himself; he both agrees (793a1-5) and disagrees that the good consists in taking pleasure and avoiding pain. Being virtuous, in contrast, is being in agreement with oneself (653b) and knowing how to pursue pleasure and flee pain in right measure (636d-e), on the basis of “knowledge” and the qualities of soul that constitute genuine excellence (cf. 667e-68a). What the Athenian has exposed in Kleinias is corruption. I believe that he does so here in order to underline the “flaw” characteristic of human nature to which the political art must accommodate itself, a disclosure that he will make more openly, if abstractly, as the conversation proceeds. The Athenian will shortly cast political life and the education that would be its chief business (803d7) as “unworthy of great seriousness” (803b4), on the grounds that “what is human, as was said earlier, has been devised as a certain plaything of god” (theou ti paignion, 803c4-5), humans “being puppets (thaumata ontes), for the most part, but sharing in small portions of the truth” (804b3-4). And when one follows the Athenian’s prompt (“as was said earlier”) to consider this subsequent passage alongside the initial “myth of virtue” about the human puppet (644c-45c), one notices that it reflects mythically, in an image, what he has brought to light in Kleinias’s character dramatically at 792b-d. In that initial image, the Athenian had likened “each of us living beings to…a divine puppet” (paignion, 644d7-8), pulled by various “cords.” Most of these cords, he had said, are “hard and iron” (645a2-3) and seem to be pulled in contrary directions by the “two opposed and imprudent counselors” that each of us possesses “within himself…which we call pleasure and pain” (644c6-7). But one cord, “the golden and sacred pull of calculation (logismos)” and “the common law of the city” should always be followed above the others, which should be used as “helpers”

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(hypƝretai, 645a6). If this image clarifies what is meant by virtue, vice, and self-mastery, as the Athenian says it does (645b-c), then it seems to suggest that the kind of virtue that amounts to self-mastery also amounts to following the law, with the help of pleasure and pain properly managed (presumably using the “expectations” connected to them, 644c-d).18 As the imagery of puppet and plaything suggests, the “virtue” ostensibly clarified here is not very lofty. Certainly, it is not governed by “intelligence” or “prudence,” the “leader among the divine goods” (631c) and the “knowledge” (636e) necessary to draw appropriately from pleasures and pains. It does not equip a person to be a law unto himself. It does not endow him with a comprehensive likeness to god.19 It equips him, rather, to be a follower and puppet of the god. The Athenian is accordingly ambivalent about its worth. We don’t know, he says, whether we have been put together for the play of the gods “or for some serious purpose” (644d). By Book Seven, the Athenian is less ambivalent. Citizens at least are puppets and playthings because they really are rather lowly. Conversely, “human beings” are lowly because they are puppets and playthings, in the sense that they are obstinately motivated by the “iron cords” of the image, by the expectations of pleasure or pain (cf. 732e). This is not surprising, given the association of genuine virtue with the divine (631c). But notice that the attachment to pleasure and pain explains why the golden cord in the puppet image is not characterized as the virtue that makes possible divine self-sufficiency. The golden cord is not called “wisdom,” “intelligence,” or even “prudence,” but rather “calculation” and “law.”20 Its pull on the puppet is “soft;” it is “always” in need of the iron cords as “helpers.” The implication of this imagery is that civic or political “virtue” cannot be rational autarky. Rather, civic virtue involves obedience to law, motivated by appeals to pleasure and pain. It requires an externally imposed framework or civil religion within which these appeals harmonize with the demands of law, just as Kleinias depends upon the Athenian.21 The humiliation of Kleinias in Book Seven mirrors the plaything image, revealing the extent to which Kleinias and others like him are at best puppets and playthings, willingly obedient to a “virtue” that is externally imposed. The second moment that the Athenian contrives in Book Seven to reduce the seriousness of the city emerges more quietly. Indeed, it completely escapes the notice of his companions. Having reminded them of Kleinias’s ignorance, the Athenian now indulges them in their hopes. He suggests that the laws Kleinias might set down be immutable, like those that the Egyptians managed to sustain “for ten thousand years”

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(656e). “Change,” he announces, “is much the most dangerous thing in everything except what is bad” (797d); “the lawgiver must think up a device” by which it might be avoided entirely (798b). Although the Dorians happily accept this claim, it certainly invites further reflection. Just as our interest had been piqued by the return to the topic of education, its having been justified on the basis of the Dorians’ forgetfulness, so the proposal to render law immutable similarly leaves us scratching our heads. The assertion that change is dangerous in everything except what is bad is true as far as it goes, but it is more natural to say that change is necessarily bad only in the singular case of the one perfect thing. Only when something flawless has changed can one say for sure that it has been made worse, that change is bad. But this reasoning becomes fallacious when reversed. Change tells us nothing about the condition of the altered thing, nor does the persistence of that thing imply anything about its merit. Persistence merely goes with perfection. It does not cause or indicate perfection. In any case, the Athenian’s proposal does not seem applicable to the regime that he and his companions are discussing. This “city of the Magnesians” (860e), he has said, is merely an imitation of the best (713b, e). As something less than perfect, changing it will not necessarily worsen it. In fact, in an earlier passage, he had claimed that Magnesia will live up to its promise only if it is improved over time. Responding to Kleinias’s assertion that their conversation about lawgiving “…is a noble and serious pursuit for real men” (769a), the Athenian had apparently corrected him by comparing lawgiving to “the painter’s activity”: Suppose someone once took it into his head to paint the most beautiful figure possible, one that would never get worse but would always improve as time went by. Don’t you see that since he’s mortal, he’ll have to leave behind a successor, able to make it right if the painting suffers some decay at the hands of time, as well as to make future touch-ups that improve on the deficiencies left by his own artistic weaknesses? (769b-c).

The allusion to painting in this passage seems intended to qualify the seriousness of the city, of the founding that might be accomplished by a “mortal.” Perhaps the city would be of greater significance were the founder deathless and possessed of absolute knowledge and power (like a painter without “artistic weaknesses”). But such a founder-painter would be unconstrained by human nature; he would be divine (657a, cf. 853c). Merely human lawgivers must allow their works to be improved if they are to live up to their full potential. The subsequent solicitation of the Dorians’ consent to render law immutable is thus contradicted in this earlier passage. Precisely at their best, the human things cannot remain

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unchanging. And yet the Athenian advertises the very opposite opinion to his companions. We can begin to make sense of why he would do so by returning to the flaw that he exposes in Kleinias. People like Kleinias are lamentably “human.” They are predisposed to being drawn to “human” goods at the expense of the virtues. Wherever the sovereign authority is vested in their hands without further interference, it will be used to “set up laws aimed primarily at…what is in the interest of the maintenance of [their] own rule” (714d). In such cases, “the ruling offices become matters for battle, and those who are victorious take over the city’s affairs to such an extent that they refuse to share any of the rule with those who lost out” (715a). For his part, the Athenian refuses to call such arrangements “regimes” nor their laws “correct” nor their inhabitants “citizens” (715b). Why, then, does he apparently believe that Kleinias and those like him can be brought to imitate a genuine regime? His answer seems to be twofold. First, the laws that “human beings” might administer must originate in a more “divine” sort of person. They must be taken over “from one of the gods” or from some “private individual” or “knower” (645b), someone less attached to the human goods than those who would receive his law. Second, such law must rule as a “despot” over the mortal lawgiver who would set up it up, and especially over the city that would administer and obey its ordinances. The human beings to whom the law would be given must regard their own obedience as a “service dedicated to the gods” and themselves as “servants” of the law and its “slaves” (715d). But if those who are so drawn to power and acquisition are to be made so obedient and tame, then every device will need to be employed to adorn the laws they would obey. They cannot be suffered to think themselves capable of creating law or permitted to deviate from its commands. That is why law must appear exceedingly perfect. It must seem to be something only a god could fashion. And since perfect things do not change, law must appear immutable as well, despite the fact that it will change. Returning to the Athenian’s putative reasons for taking up the discussion of education a second time, we can now see the real reasons for his trepidation at 797a. In the first books of the dialogue, the Stranger had succeeded in his initial goal of demonstrating that the political art is serious only in taking as its principal objective the virtue of citizens. Now, in Book Seven, he brings the conversation around to a reassessment of the life that the political art might bring into being. He exposes a grave flaw in its raw material, in the character of political men. And he sets down the appropriate response to this flaw that someone in his position ought to

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take. He must walk a fine line between reducing the self-confidence of those to whom he would give law and augmenting their faith in the exquisite correctness of law. This delicate balance is reflected in the Athenian’s summative remarks on the serious and the playful: Of course, the affairs of human beings are not worthy of great seriousness; yet it is necessary to be serious about them. And this is not a fortunate thing. But since we’re here, if somehow we would carry out the business in some appropriate way it would perhaps be a well-measured thing for us to do. But whatever am I saying? Someone would perhaps be correct to take me up in this very way. Kl.

Indeed!

Ath. I assert that what is serious should be treated seriously, and what is not serious should not, and that by nature god is worthy of a complete, blessed seriousness, but that what is human, as we said earlier, has been devised as a certain plaything of god and that this is really the best thing about it.” (803b3-c6).22

Although he tries to humble his companions and, through them, the citizens of the city that they might found, the Athenian is coy about what it is that so reduces their seriousness.23 Claiming to have been “looking away toward the god” (804b7-8), he avails himself of their reverence. He reminds them that, as mortal creatures, they must be wary of reaching too high. But he also gives his most careful listeners sufficient clues to grasp his deeper meaning.24 If human affairs cannot be taken as seriously as the god, then human beings must remain unlike god. And since god is a paradigm of perfection, human beings must remain imperfect. The merit of immutability, however, had depended on flawless laws, and such laws can only be created by flawless lawgivers, if they can be created at all. So it follows that immutability cannot be practiced well by mortal men. Nonetheless, the Athenian maintains that it is necessary to be serious about human affairs. Being serious is being like god, so the necessity of being serious about the human implies a need to obscure the extent to which the human cannot really become divine. Given that this remark comes in the midst of discussing legislative immutability, we are invited to make the following conjecture: that it is unfortunately necessary that the law appear more authoritative than it really should.25 If one keeps these points in mind when pondering the claim that Magnesia is a tragedy, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it refers to the same regrettable necessity. On the one hand, the Athenian associates tragedy with “the serious things” (810e, 817a2-3, 838c). On the other, he

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identifies tragedy with the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life. It is because the “whole regime” performs this sort of imitation, he says, that it is the “truest tragedy.” Now if the god is the most serious thing, then one becomes serious by becoming like god. Tragic imitation, therefore, is “serious” to the extent that it is an imitation of god. Yet just as the Athenian has claimed that the best practicable regime will fall short in its emulation of god, so he maintains that human affairs “are not worthy of great seriousness.” At most, human things will achieve a derivative, second-best status. Tragic imitation, then, is the imitation of god that falls short. And finally, just as the imperfection of law must be effaced in the second-best regime, so too must that regime be artificially “serious” about human affairs. It must pretend to follow divine intellect when in fact it obeys opinion. It must “hope” that its law is sufficiently true that it might bring to completion the most beautiful drama, even if that hope is ultimately unfounded. If so, then the truest tragedy is the imitation of god in view of this unfortunate necessity. It is tragic not only because it must fall short of its goal, but also because it must obscure the full extent of its failure.

The Tragic Persistence of Tragedy This reading of tragedy in the Laws departs quite markedly from mainstream interpretations and one might raise several objections on their behalf. One might complain, for instance, that we have assigned a significance to tragedy that is rather anachronistic. Indeed, Susan Sauvé Meyer has warned against reading an “evaluative meaning” into Plato’s use of tragedy for precisely this reason. She contends that “nowhere among Plato’s contemporaries is it obviously used in the modern sense of calamitous and lamentable.”26 For Sauvé Meyer, it follows that the Athenian cannot be saying at 817b2-5 “that the legislation he is devising is ‘tragic’ in the sense that it is, for example, unfortunately necessary given the human condition. He is saying, rather, that in constructing a politeia (constitution) for the Magnesians, he is practicing in the same genre as the tragic poets,” where the essential characteristic of that genre is merely “the depiction of the best life.”27 These two claims are mutually exclusive, however, only if one allows these further suppositions: first, that Plato’s understanding of “the salient feature of tragedy” agrees with the understanding of his “contemporaries” and, second, that Plato holds the “depiction” or “imitation” (mimƝsis)28 of the serious things to be tragic only insofar as it reproduces the serious things, and not to the extent that it falls short. The claim that none of Plato’s contemporaries understood the

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tragic as that which is unfortunately necessary is highly doubtful in any case. Sauvé Meyer herself allows that “the typical tragic plot” pivots around “disaster and misfortune.”29 One problem with the objection, then, is that it is starkly contradictory. If “the typical tragic plot” in Aeschylus or Sophocles shows bad things happening to “good and worthy people,” then it cannot be an anachronism to assign an “evaluative meaning” to tragedy, even if one draws a sharp distinction between “the plot structure…in [tragedy’s] most famous exemplars” and the “subject matter” of those same works.30 Indeed, because Sauvé Meyer maintains that Plato repudiates “the typical tragic plot,” her argument actually requires that an evaluative meaning be assigned to “typical” tragedy. But instead of presupposing what Plato could or could not mean by this term, based on our necessarily limited knowledge of how it was used by his contemporaries, we should take our bearings first from how the dialogues themselves discuss tragedy and the tragic. In the Laws, at least, tragedy is associated with the imitation of the serious things, but it is also connected to regrettable necessity (insofar as 817b-d points to 803b-04c),31 weeping and lamentation (800d), and the gratification of the many (658d). Still, Sauvé Meyer would no doubt press her case that the Athenian follows Socrates in the Republic (387d-88e) to the extent that he denies that the truly serious is subject to misfortune. “Typical” tragedy might represent the weighty affairs of serious people, but it misrepresents their importance. By showing their surprising vulnerability to terrible suffering, the tragic poets (not least Homer, Rep. 598d) attach undue significance to the human goods, to things that are vulnerable to misfortune, while misrepresenting the virtues that confer on those goods what worth they have.32 Hence the truly serious things, those pertaining to the life endowed with divine goods, should not provoke lamentation when properly represented; the best life can be tragic only insofar as it is serious. And the “truest tragedy,” as the imitation of the best life, accurately depicts the invulnerability of that life. In taking this view, however, Sauvé Meyer makes an instructive mistake. She assumes that the repudiation of “typical” tragedy, in the case of the best and truly serious life, implies the repudiation of tragedy in representing or imitating that life. As she appreciates, this would only be the case were the imitation that is the truest tragedy to fit the criterion set down in Book Two for a correct imitation, which “…exists where there is complete reproduction both in quantity and quality of the thing imitated” (668b6-7).33 But this cannot be what is meant at 817b, if only because the regime that would emulate the best way of life is supposed to be second to

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the best. Were Magnesia to succeed in reproducing completely the model on which it is based, it would have to realize completely the political art, educating citizens in the genuine excellence that really is worth taking seriously. Citizens would have to become gods, or at least godlike philosophers. This mistake depends on a misreading of the “puppet” and “plaything” image to which the truest tragedy passage is connected. Sauvé Meyer is right to read 817a2-3 as a reference to the Athenian’s sermon on the serious and the playful. Accordingly, she connects the claim about the truest tragedy to that sermon and to its use of the puppet imagery. She is also right to find this imagery “reflected in the lesson that the legislator is supposed to teach the citizens about the relative priority between what the Athenian calls ‘divine goods’ and ‘human goods’ [1.631b3-d6, cf. 2.661ac].”34 She appreciates that, “in calling a human being the ‘plaything’ of the gods, the Athenian underlines humanity’s insignificance in the face of the divine.” Even so, Sauvé Meyer overlooks the explanation that the puppet image furnishes for why the human things are insignificant. On her reading, “…to live out one’s life as a ‘puppet of the gods’” is to devote one’s life “…to the cultivation of the divine element in ourselves.” It is to prioritize the divine goods, the virtues, having internalized the “lesson” that the worthiness of the human goods radically depends on them, which Sauvé Meyer takes to imply the sufficiency of virtue for happiness.35 If the virtuous person is necessarily happy, then he has “no grounds for lamentation.” It follows that the “weeping and lamentation evoked by the tragedies of the poets,” in their representations of “good and worthy people,” attests to a mistake about such people, one the Athenian will not make. But this interpretation overlooks the vital fact that the Athenian does not assimilate “the affairs of human beings” to the good and the worthy.36 By his lights, there are no genuinely serious “human beings.” Rather, precisely because mankind is the plaything and puppet of the gods, man is inexorably motivated by the “iron cords” of pleasure and pain, which is why one’s humanity diminishes one’s seriousness. It is the god who is paradigmatic of the good and the worthy. The citizen cannot be taken nearly as seriously as he. The citizen must necessarily remain unlike the god, a necessity that is regrettable and that really is worthy of lamentation. The Athenian does repudiate accounts of the best life that make that life seem lamentable. But he projects that life into the divine, leaving its mortal imitation within the tragic horizon, within the ambit of the vulnerable and lamentable. Perhaps one might still respond that the discussion of poetry and censorship in Book Two does not explicitly distinguish the human from

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divine. There (660e, 662b-c, 664b-c), the Athenian claims that the lawgiver should require the poets to identify the happy life with the pleasant, and the pleasant life with the virtuous, apparently referring to a life that a citizen might really lead.37 Suppose the “typical tragic plot” shows the serious (and virtuous) life diverging from the pleasant life. If so, then the Athenian does appear, in these passages at least, to be extending his repudiation of “typical” tragedy to the affairs of men. He seems to suggest that the life in which pleasure and virtue coincide is not only the most beautiful and best, but also the political way of life, which implies that the political imitation of the best really can be assimilated to the best. Perhaps, then, Plato does repudiate the tragic sense of unfortunate necessity in both the political and paradigmatic cases, and not merely in the latter. However, we have good reason to dismiss this last objection as well. In fact, reflecting on the difficulty it raises reveals a further layer to the conception of tragedy that emphasizes unfortunate necessity. Were we to interpret the poetic reconciliation of virtue and happiness as something sincere, it would contradict what the Athenian says in Book Seven about the triviality of human affairs. It would imply that the gulf between human and divine is traversable because civic and divine virtue are identical, which would leave us with a puzzling inconsistency. In the event, the Athenian gives us ample reason to suspect the sincerity of the reconciliation that he would have the poets effect, at least as it concerns the merely political virtue of “human beings.” It is surely significant that he asks whether “a lawgiver of any worth [could] ever tell a lie more profitable than this [identifying the most pleasant life with the most just]…or more effective in making everybody do all the just things willingly” (663d-e). In any case, he accounts for the usefulness of this lie by implicitly distinguishing virtue of the highest kind from virtue as selfcontrol. The problem, he says, is that the appearance of the virtues is conditioned by the character of whoever looks upon them. Seen “from a distance,” they are obscure and shadow-like, distortions of their true natures. To the “unjust and evil man” from whom they are far away, unjust things “appear pleasant, the opposite of the way they appear to the just man, while the just things appear very unpleasant” (663c). Given the tenacious attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain evidenced in every mortal animal (732e), this problem of perspective poses potentially grave difficulties. The ordinary citizen is fallible and therefore unjust. Accordingly, the unjust things appear to him as tempting and pleasant, the just things as burdensome and painful. That explains why the virtue that he would

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practice depends on “self-control” (to kreittô heautou, 645b2), on overcoming his deceptive sense of pleasure and pain. It also explains why the political way of life must fall short of the life that is “most beautiful and best.” The political way of life achieves justice only through painful self-overcoming; the divine way of life enjoys a harmony between justice and pleasure. Moreover, it follows that the tragic divergence of the pleasant and happy life from the serious and virtuous must resonate with the citizen’s experience. At the limit, when virtue appears exceedingly burdensome or exceptionally attractive, self-control can be sustained only by altering the appearance of self-overcoming, obscuring its painful face behind an image of effortless virtue. In the case of political life, virtue and happiness do in fact diverge. This divergence is to be effaced by the poets of the city, but it lurks beneath the city’s self-presentation. If, while keeping these points in mind, we return to the discussion of tragedy and the serious in Book Seven, then we arrive at a better sense of why the truest tragedy must obscure the full extent of its own derivative status. The natural proclivity to perceive the just as standing apart from the pleasant threatens the common good on which healthy politics depends. The human being takes pleasure in acquiring goods of the body, goods that cannot be held in common (739c) and whose acquisition therefore comes at others’ expense. Happiness seems to lie, therefore, in a certain injustice. But the lawgiver can at least take away the obscurity of the just and unjust things. He can compel the poets to sing not only of a life in which the just and the pleasant do in fact cohere, but of a citizenship that assimilates itself to that way of life. He can thus assuage the pain that dedication to the common good inspires by arousing hope that its painful austerity is an illusion. And since the Athenian points to precisely this political psychology when observing, in Book Seven (803b-04c), the need to take the human excessively seriously, he implies that doing so amounts to propagating a useful fiction about justice. To take the human more seriously than it deserves is to obscure the gulf separating the human from the divine. But it is also to conceal the gap separating the life in which virtue is painful self-control and the life in which virtue is effortlessly pleasant. That is why the truest tragedy, the imitation of the divine way of life that falls short, is also the imitation that conceals the full extent of its failure. It is also why the Athenian’s embrace of tragedy must remain superficial. The attachment to the body that threatens political life is at the root of tragedy’s allure,38 and the Athenian is hardly sanguine about the prospects of transcending that attachment. The whole in which human life proceeds can seem malevolent and frightening inasmuch as the virtues that

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we are called to practice are unrewarded by the goods that we are inclined to pursue. But whereas traditional tragedy invites the cathartic expression of the suffering that this appearance inspires (cf. Arist. Poet. 1449b27-28), the Athenian’s alternative replaces catharsis with hope. His lawgiver sings of a cosmic providence, of an orderly world in which the virtues of the political life and the pleasure of self-affirmation coincide (899d-905c). This alternative poetry, or indeed theology, is more civically responsible by the Athenian’s lights. But it remains a tragedy, rooted as it is in the crooked timber of humanity, a mere palliative to a stubborn flaw.

Conclusion If the foregoing is correct, then what is ultimately at stake in determining the appropriate orientation to tragedy is very much indeed. To make that determination is to ascertain the nature of the best way of life and its place, not only among the human things, but within the whole of which the human is but a part. If we take the Athenian at his word, then he at least agrees with the Socratic position that the best way of life is both just and pleasant. But if we carefully follow the cues of his poetic language (cf. 811c-d with 719c-d and Phaedrus 277b-e), not least the identification of the political with the “human,” then we are invited to speculate whether the best way of life is inaccessible to all but a few “divine human beings” (951b). Rightly understood, tragedy is the imitation of the best life in light of this putative fact. Tragedy imitates the serious things—above all the best life itself—but does so in view of the problematic appearance that that life typically takes. It is due to the durability of this appearance that tragic imitation falls short. It is because human beings obstinately long for human goods that “the human” cannot become “divine.” Still, if the human would become divine “as far as possible” (eis dunamin, 716c8, cf. 728c, 739e3),39 then the extent to which the divine goods call for painful self-control must be eclipsed. The all-toohuman appeal of self-affirmation must be poetically harmonized with the self-sacrifice that the civic virtues sometimes demand. In his hope that he might become like the god, man must become god’s puppet and plaything. In the truest tragedy, the human must be taken more seriously than it deserves. This need equally attests to the Socratic claim with which Plato concludes the Symposium. We learn there that “the same man should know how to make comedy and tragedy; and [that] he who is by art a tragic poet is also a comic poet” (223d).40 If it is of the essence of comedy to take the ridiculous seriously,41 then the truest tragedy of the Laws must also be a

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comedy just as its author must be poetically ambidextrous. The truest tragedy of the Laws comprehends the hope that the emulation of god might be brought “to completion.” Yet that hope is ultimately misplaced, at least as it concerns the “human” citizen. Indeed, there is an important sense in which the citizen himself must humbly submit to the gulf separating the human and divine.42 He must concede that only “god” is worthy of complete seriousness, that only “god” is the measure of all things. Even so, he who would understand the human and political things at their best must grasp something that the citizen does not. He must perceive that the seriousness with which political things invest themselves is at once lamentable and comical. The “true law” that would govern the practically best regime must pretend to a perfection that it cannot achieve; the way of life that would characterize the practically best regime must be founded upon “a profitable lie.” Those like the Athenian will examine these necessities while “looking away toward the god” (804b7-8). From the prospect they thus attain, the imitation of god effected by the city comes to sight as what it really is—an artificial elevation of what is by nature insignificant.

Notes 1

I am grateful to Edward Andrew, Ryan Balot, Jeremy Fortier, Stephen Salkever, Tucker Landy, and Ryan McKinnell for comments on previous versions of this chapter, as well as to members of the audience at the CPSA and NPSA annual meetings where two of these versions were presented. 2 Socrates’s charge is levelled against Homer especially. On the significance of Homer as a paradigm of tragedy see Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 108-111. 3 Unless otherwise noted, all translations of the Laws are from The Laws of Plato, trans. T. L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 4 The apparent contradiction between Socrates’s criticism of tragedy in the Republic and the Athenian’s embrace of tragedy in the Laws has been pointed out by André Laks. See “Plato’s ‘truest tragedy’ (Laws, 817a-b),” in A Critical Guide to Plato’s Laws, ed. Christopher Bobonich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 218. Laks notes, however, that Republic 10 does not “decisively exclude...a redefinition of tragedy, i.e. a positive appropriation of something rejected under a different description” (ibid., 221 n. 17, Laks’s emphasis). Cf. Jacob Howland, “Plato’s Apology as Tragedy,” The Review of Politics 70, no. 4 (2008): 522, who suggests that the Republic leaves room for a rehabilitative project, in as much as “...the order of being is—as Socrates repeatedly acknowledges—at least partially eclipsed in human existence.” For the view that the Laws does not rehabilitate tragedy at all, see Penelope Murray, “Paides

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Malakon Mouson,” in Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws, ed. A. Peponi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 294-312. 5 Cf. Thomas L. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” in The Laws of Plato, 376-77. 6 Though he does so implicitly at 800c5-d5. 7 Leo Strauss, City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 16. Cf. Laws 739c6-d1 with Rep. 416d5-6, 464d8-9. Attraction to the human goods is also related to the fear of death, for death implies the extinction of the body and the self and hence poses the ultimate obstacle to self-love. 8 Pace Leo Strauss, The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 8 and Susan Sauvé Meyer, trans., Plato: Laws 1 & 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 108-110. See n. 35 below. 9 I owe this point to Ryan Balot. 10 Pace Susan Sauvé Meyer, “Legislation as a Tragedy: On Plato’s Laws VII, 817B-D,” in Plato and the Poets, eds. Paul Destrée & Fritz-Gregor Herrmann, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 387-402 and Letitia Mouze, “La Dernière Tragédie de Platon,” Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, 16, no. 2 (1998): 82. N.b. the close connection that Plato assumes between politeia and bios. Cf. Arist. Pol. 4.11.3: “the regime is the way of life [bios] of a city.” 12 In “Legislation as a Tragedy,” 399-400, Sauvé Meyer takes these same lines as the key to her own interpretation, holding that they attest to the idea that tragedy is the genre that pronounces on the serious things (ta spoudaia). However, as I argue below, we have good reason to dispute Sauvé Meyer’s interpretation of the Athenian’s conception of the serious. 13 See Laws 7.810e, 8.838c; Gorg. 502b; Rep. 8.545e, 568a-b; Arist. Poet. 1449b911, 24-25. Cf. Emanuelle Jouët-Pastré, Le Jeu et le Sérieux dans les Lois de Platon (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2006), 140-47. 14 As Pangle notes, the phrase can also be rendered “this consonance is virtue as whole.” The Laws of Plato, 518 n. 2. 15 But cf. 822e-23a. 16 On the importance of the theme of “retreat” and its connection to the persistence of human nature, see André Laks, “The Laws,” in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, eds. Christopher Rowe & Malcom Schofield (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 269. 17 The following interpretation of the passage beginning at 792b can be contrasted with the alternative proposed by Thomas Pangle in his “Interpretive Essay,” 47981, and developed by Mark J. Lutz in Divine Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 102 and Lorraine S. Pangle in Virtue is Knowledge: The Moral Foundations of Socratic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 241. According to that reading, the Athenian in Book Seven begins to elaborate a novel conception of civic virtue grounded in “stoutness of soul” (eupsychia), a popular form of courage hostile to tragic lamentation. 18 Thus, on my reading, the “helpers” of the golden cord are actually versions of the iron cords, as I elaborate below, or “nonrational servants,” as Morrow helpfully

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points out in Glenn R. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 557. 19 For the distinction between kinds of likeness implied in the Athenian’s treatment of imitation, see Robert Ballingall, “Distant Goals: Second-best Imitation in Plato’s Laws,” History of Political Thought 37 (2016): 1-24. 20 Bobonich rightly notes that the Athenian classifies “calculation” as a “passion” for the purposes of the puppet image (644e1), but insists—implausibly in my view—that the Athenian does not mean to minimize its connection to intelligence in doing so. See Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 539-40 n. 77. 21 In speaking of a “civil religion,” I adhere to the formulation of Ronald Beiner in Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2: “the empowerment of religion, not for the sake of religion, but for the sake of enhanced citizenship—of making members of the political community better citizens, in accordance with whatever conception one holds of what constitutes being a good citizen.” 22 Cf. Rep. 604b. 23 David Roochnik suggests that this coy attitude reflects dramatically the playfulness with which the Athenian says he looks on human affairs. In so quickly taking back his denial of human seriousness (804b), responding to the indignation that he thus arouses in Megillus, he mirrors Aristophanes’s response to Eryximachus in the Symposium. Having incurred the latter’s ire, the comic replies “let what was said by me be unsaid” (Sym. 189b3-4). See David Roochnik, “The ‘Serious Play’ of Book 7 of Plato’s Laws,” in Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth in Politics, eds. Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 146-47. 24 Cf. 822e-23a with 811d-e. 25 Cf. Ryan K. Balot, “Likely Stories and the Political Art in Plato’s Laws,” in Probabilities, Hypotheticals, and Counterfactuals in Ancient Greek Thought, ed. Victoria Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 80-81. Balot helpfully observes that the authority the Athenian tries to attach to his speeches is self-consciously dubious, not only because it depends on treating clumsy dogmas as the very truth, but also because the Athenian himself lacks certain knowledge. 26 Sauvé Meyer, “Legislation as a Tragedy,” 389. 27 Ibid., pp. 389, 392. 28 Part of the difficulty of interpreting the truest tragedy passage is that mimƝsis admits of multiple valences. Depending on context, it can be translated as “imitation,” “representation,” or, as Laks suggests is applicable to its usage in Republic 3 and 10 respectively, “performance” or “enactment” and “reproduction.” See “Truest Tragedy,” 222. I prefer Pangle’s “imitation” because it best preserves, pace Sauvé Meyer, the sense of incompleteness or falling short that the Athenian attaches to tragedy. 29 In this capacity, Sauvé Meyer approvingly cites Ruth Padel, In and Out of Mind: Greek images of the Tragic Self (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 4 and Stephen Halliwell, “Plato’s Repudiation of the Tragic,” in Tragedy and the

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Tragic, ed. M. S. Silk (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 338. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 2.13-14. 30 Sauvé Meyer, “Legislation as a Tragedy,” 392. 31 Cf. Laws 9.858a, 880e. On this issue, I follow Laks and Halliwell who find in Plato a “de-theatricalization” of tragedy (Laks, “Truest Tragedy,” 220) that appeals to a “conception of ‘the tragic’,” that is, “some ultimate vision of or insight into reality…with profound spiritual and ethical consequences for human beings’ sense of their place in the world” (Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis, 99, 107). 32 Cf. Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis, 106. 33 Sauvé Meyer, “Legislation as a Tragedy,” 396. 34 Ibid., 402. 35 Ibid. 36 Another difficulty with Sauvé Meyer’s view is that it assumes—with Strauss in fact (Argument and Action, 8)—that 631b7-c1 implies the sufficiency of virtue for happiness. The Athenian claims that “if a city receives the greater [the divine goods] it will also acquire the lesser [the human goods].” But he does not mean that “virtue guarantees…the well-being of the body and even the right kind of wealth,” as Strauss maintains. Rather, as he makes clear in the subsequent lines, the Athenian intends that the human goods are beneficial only to the extent that the city enjoys them in accordance with virtue. Of course, a city can acquire the human goods without virtue, just as it can lose them with virtue. But in the former case, the human goods are no longer beneficial and therefore no longer “goods.” Virtue guarantees only that the human goods can be well used. The city that acquires the divine goods therefore acquires only the goodness of whatever bodily powers it happens to possess. The Athenian never claims that virtue could somehow guarantee the acquisition of these bodily powers as well. That would require conquering chance, a prospect the Athenian explicitly disavows (4.709a-c). 37 At any rate, that is the sense in which Sauvé Meyer reads these passages. 38 Cf. Minos 321a, where Socrates calls tragedy “the poetry that is most pleasing to the populace and the most soul-alluring,” trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 53-66. The allure of tragedy is owing to how it tempers the suffering inspired by nature’s indifference and mysteriousness. But traditional tragedy invites the cathartic expression of that suffering in ritualistic displays of pity and fear; the Athenian’s tragedy avails itself of another, equally human inclination: the predisposition to perceive “orders and disorders in motions” and to take pleasure in those that betray rhythm and harmony (653e-54a, cf. 893b-99d). 39 Cf. André Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy: On the Relationship Between the Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’,” Classical Antiquity 9 (1990): 213-18. 40 Trans. Seth Benardete, Plato’s Symposium (Chicago, 2001). 41 Cf. Strauss, City and Man, 62. 42 See, e.g., 716a-b with 731d-32b.

CHAPTER SIX CLASSICAL REASON AND JUSTICE LEAH BRADSHAW

After a long career of teaching in the university, there are many memorable encounters with students but one stands out for me. A young woman, mother of two children, came to my office after her final examination in her undergraduate degree. I had been encouraging her to go on to graduate school. She was particularly gifted in her capacity to reason through complex philosophical questions. She told me that this was not possible for her, as her life was too congested with family responsibilities to consider such a path. But she also told me that she felt happy with her decision. She had been mildly depressed for a decade before coming to university, and had tried all sorts of therapeutic remedies for her malaise, but political philosophy had been redemptive for her. She said that she now realized that she had been not depressed, but confused. She had had no tools to help her sort through the fog of her life, but what she had gained in university, and especially in her political philosophy classes, was a capacity to reason. She could now situate her life and her responsibilities into a meaningful narrative, and she saw a clear path ahead that included educating her children and continuing to read. I begin with this story because it illuminates in a concise way the power of reason, not reason in any narrow or calculative sense, but reason as meaning-seeking and meaning-conferring. Human beings are appetitive and passionate creatures, but they alone among all beings have the capacity to direct those appetites and passions in meaningful (or destructive) ways. Aristotle for me is the philosopher who best articulates the complexity of being human. If we ask ourselves: what is human nature? we get a multifaceted response from Aristotle. Nature is determinant in some ways. A stone will fall downward if I drop it, and I cannot habituate a stone to do anything different from its natural course. 1 A human being will come into the world, live a mortal life, and die. That is an elemental fact of nature.2 But human beings, unlike stones, and like

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some other sentient creatures, have passions and emotions of varying degrees. Aristotle chronicles these well. But there is no such thing for a human being as an emotion, or a passion, that is not guided in some way by reason. This is where human beings differ from all other sentient creatures. 3People make deliberative choices about how they will direct their feelings, even if they are not completely aware of how they are doing that. The “desiring and generally appetitive part [of the human being] does share in it [reason] in some way, insofar as it listens to and can obey reason.”4 We speak of people’s distinct characters, and when we do this, we are identifying a general pattern of response that has accrued from a consistent way of responding to things in the world. We can identify someone as generally irascible, or despondent, or impulsive, or melancholy. Character seems to be partly a consequence of habit, and habit, as we know, again from Aristotle, is something cultivated in a particular context of family, society and political order. People are not isolated monads, and they are shaped by the contours of their environments, political and cultural. As Jonathan Jacobs notes of Aristotle: “His view is that there are ethically important features of an agent’s character that are not innate. They are acquired, but once acquired and established, they are resistant to change.”5 Fixity of character is troubling to Jacobs. “Someone may need years of adult life and experience to figure out how to manage resentment or how to be less self-centered, or how to recognize the ways in which he has been less than fully honest or courageous, but he may still fail to overcome the inclination to dishonesty or cowardice.” 6 Yet, human beings are capable of steering their habits in alternate directions, and they are capable of managing their emotions in differing ways, and this is precisely because they have the independent ability to reason. My student was able to reorient her thoughts and redirect her life. Aristotle writes: “Now since virtue is of two sorts, one pertaining to thinking and the other to character, excellence of thinking is for the most part, both in its coming to be and in its growth, a result of teaching, for which reason it has need of experience and time, while excellence of character comes into being as a consequence of habit.”7 Character, once settled, may be difficult to reorient, but it is not impossible. “For [men] act in many ways contrary to their habituation and their nature through reason, if they are persuaded that some other condition is better.”8 What is obvious here in the exposition of Aristotelian ethics, is that there is an inseparable connection among character, reason and virtue. For Aristotle, it is not possible to make a claim about what is a reasonable choice without at the same time making a claim about what is good.

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“Since there are three things that lead to choices and three that lead to avoidance, the former being what is beautiful, what is advantageous and what is pleasant, and the contraries being what is ugly, what is harmful and what is painful, the good person is apt to go right and the bad person is apt to go astray concerning all of these.”9 Virtues (and vices) are not feelings. Virtues are “certain kinds of choices, or not present without choice.” 10 We deliberate, and choose, about things “that are up to us and are matters of action…for the causes responsible for things seem to be nature, necessity and chance, and also intelligence and everything that is due to a human being. And among human beings, each sort deliberates about the things to be done by its own acts.” 11The ‘good person’ for Aristotle, is the one who chooses as much as possible in accordance with the beautiful, the advantageous and the pleasant, but these goals are framed in the understanding of justice and temperance. Justice and temperance are virtues, and they are the artful consequences of reasonable deliberation. To be fully human, one ought to choose and act as far as possible with justice and temperance, taking into account the contingencies of nature, necessity and chance. Nature grants some people more capacities, physical and intellectual, than others; some people have lives that are inordinately consumed by necessity – getting enough food, seeking shelter from harsh climate, providing for dependent others; fortune grants to some people great advantages of wealth, domestic peace, the security of law, and opportunity for education. Aristotle acknowledges these contingencies. They are significant factors in configuring a human life, but they are not definitive. We take our bearings from our highest potential. Steven Salkever Is another Aristotle scholar preoccupied with the connection between reason and character. A key proposition, Salkever writes, in Aristotle’s “teleological definition of humanity”, is his account of “what it is among the things we do and suffer that makes us who we are.” 12 This definition, as he says “gives chief place to prohairesis, not merely ‘choice’ or ‘intentional choice’, and certainly not ‘free will’, but the ability and inclination to think through the options available to us and then act on the basis of those deliberations.”13 Prohairesis, Salkever identifies as understanding combined with desire that “makes a human being a human being”. We may be shaped in some fundamental way by our inborn (biological) elements, and furthermore by the habits we develop in childhood from what we now call our socialization in family, cultural and political context, but “we become just and moderate, etc. by performing just and moderate actions”, and it is on the basis of deliberating about our actions that we are judged.

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Reason for Aristotle we have established, is bound up with character and with the pursuit of the good (justice and temperance, or moderation), but it is very difficult to establish in any more rigorous way what are reason’s goals. Judgments about courses of action are always taken in particular contexts, and thus must be evaluated in those contexts. And so, we have to add another element to the triad of character, virtue and reason, and that is politics. Famously, Aristotle opens that Politics by claiming that man is by nature a political animal, and by stating than anyone who lives outside a polis is either a beast or a god. “The city is prior by nature to the household and to each of us.” 14 The “city’ is by nature prior to any individual person, because individuals, when separated from the city, are not self-sufficient. By nature, Aristotle does not mean instinctively, but according to what human beings are fitted for, which is a life aimed toward virtue, employing reason and the passions as much as possible in the cooperative project of living together. To live according to human nature requires artifice, law and craft. “Just as man is the best of animals when completed, when separated from law and adjudication he is the worst of all.”15 He is worst of all when separated from political community governed by law, because he has the capacity for reason, and he can use that reason in destructive ways, specifically in wreaking violence on others. “Injustice is harshest when it is furnished with arms; and man is born naturally possessing arms for the [use of] prudence and virtue which are nevertheless very susceptible to being used for their opposites. This is why, without virtue, he is the most unholy and most savage [of the animals]”. 16 The virtue of justice, the virtue specific to human beings, is cultivated in the city, by design and maintenance of law. There seems to be some tension however, in Aristotle, between this characterization of human beings as naturally political, and his affirmation of human reason as capable of directing the passions so as to reform character in accordance with the aspiration for virtue. Political (and familial) context seems to be definitive in some way for our potential, but in another way, not. Living outside the law has the danger of making one vicious and ‘unholy’, but what about resisting bad laws? Aristotle does not foreclose this possibility. He makes a clear distinction between the ‘good man’ and the ‘good citizen’. The good citizen is someone who is described as such because he is a faithful servant of the regime he inhabits. “Although citizens are dissimilar”, Aristotle writes, “preservation of the partnership [of the city] is their task, and the regime is [this] partnership; hence the virtue of the citizen must be with a view to the regime. If then, there are several forms of regime, it is clear that it is not possible for the virtue of the citizen to be

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a single, or complete, virtue.” 17Good citizens uphold the laws, and look toward the common good of the community they share with others. They also have to be willing to fight for the preservation of the regime if it is under threat or attack. Human made laws are not perfect, and they typically are crafted with a consideration of the peculiar characteristics of the community they are meant to govern. They have to take account of geography, class structures, hereditary attributes of the inhabitants, and so on. lt is also possible, according to Aristotle, to identify something like community character which has solidified owing to climate, habituation and what we might now term ‘cultural’ formation. “The nations in cold locations”, Aristotle quips, “particularly in Europe, are filled with spiritedness, but relatively lacking in thought and art; hence they remain freer, but lack [political] governance and are incapable of ruling over their neighbours. Those in Asia, on the other hand, have souls endowed with thought and art, but are lacking in spiritedness; hence they remain ruled and enslaved.” 18 Judging good citizenship for Aristotle requires taking account of these differences. A good citizen in northern Europe will not be the same as a good citizen in Greece, although it has to be said that Aristotle clearly thought it was better to be a citizen in Greece. The Greeks, he proclaimed, are capable of both spiritedness and thought, and hence are “capable of ruling all.” We may rankle at Aristotle’s cultural stereotyping but his point is that there are no universal prescriptions for good citizenship. The good citizen will be defined by the regime that is inhabited, with all its particularities, good and bad. The ‘good man’ is evaluated by altogether a different standard than the good citizen. The virtue common to ‘good men’ is prudence, and prudence is a ruling virtue, that combines right reason with properly directed actions. In the discussion of the difference between the good citizen and the good man, Aristotle emphasizes the ruling aspect of prudence because it seems that to be a good man, one must in a position to make deliberative decisions on one’s own ground. Someone who is ruled by others does not have the opportunity to exercise independent judgment. He can demonstrate “right opinion” by deferring to the judgment of the ruler, but right opinion is not the same as prudence. Furthermore, if one evaluates the good man in a political role, one can conclude that the only time in which the good citizen and the good man converge is an instance in which one is ruling over persons who are “similar in stock and free”. 19 This would be a perfect democracy, with citizens who are all educated and habituated in exactly the same free way. This is unlikely ever to happen. The fact is that political rule of any kind requires compromise, coercion and the prospect of “dirty hands”.

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But a man can rule himself. And he can do that by ordering his soul in accordance with reason, and it appears that for Aristotle, who did so infamously declare that we are political beings, and who did identify those who tried to break out of the constraints of the political as beastly or godlike, it is very possible for a singular human being to put himself outside the contours of his regime in some way, and stand alone as a selfgoverning individual. And it is reason that makes this possible. At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle comes around to conclusively evaluate what makes human beings happy, he does not identity the political union, or even the ruling virtue of prudence, but rather, the right exercise of reason. “The intellect is the most excellent of the things in us, and the things with which the intellect is concerned are the most excellent things that can be known.” 20 The exercise of reason is also to be acclaimed as most closely identified with human happiness, because the exercise of the intellect is the “most continuous”, most stable, and least vulnerable to the contingencies of fortune. Thinking has a divine element to it, even though it is a quintessentially human capacity. “If the intellect is something divine in comparison to the human being, the life in accord with this intellect would also be divine in comparison to the human life. But one ought not – as some recommend – to think only about human things because one is a human being, nor only about mortal things because one is mortal, but rather, to make oneself immortal as far as that is possible, and to do all that bears on living in accord with what is the most excellent of the things in oneself.”21 Living according to the ‘divine element’ in one’s humanity would seem to be a real possibility for anyone, anywhere, precisely because thinking is not anchored to the changing fluctuations of the ethical and the political. We can think outside our habits, our culture and our political constraints. If thinking were not connected to this ‘divine’ element, this would not be so. The “good man’ is the thinking man, and that means the man who identifies reason with virtue, and who tries as far as possible to align his character with his understanding. If he were in a position to make laws and rule over equally good men, he certainly would be an outstanding citizen. If these opportunities evade him, perhaps even in grotesque ways (for example, if he inhabits a vicious regime, marked by excess of all kinds, and gross injustices) he can still reason about what is good.22 There is what we might call a transcendent aspect to reason that makes it possible for one to understand something about justice and good independent of one’s immediate context, and therefore makes it possible for one to adopt a critical perspective on one’s regime. Aristotle acknowledges this when he advises: “when cities utterly neglect the public care, it would seem

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appropriate for each individual to contribute to the virtue of his own offspring and friends, or at least to make the choice to do so."23 Aristotle’s entanglement of politics, character, virtue and vice, and reason is in many respects anathema to the way in which we think of reason, and reason’s objectives, in the modern world. For one thing, the imprecision of Aristotle’s pronouncements on reason is frustrating to a mindset that is framed in terms of scientific precision. Steven Salkever articulates this problem well, when he declares that there is a “deep implicit agreement about the relationship between style and objectivity uniting the followers of Descartes and Hobbes on the one hand and of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the other: that propositions containing objective truth must be clear and precise.”24 The modernist claims for reason are “clarity and precision” and “absence of ambiguity”, and Aristotle contravenes this “modern/postmodern theoretical agreement by setting forth the view that true and false propositions about the world are distinguishable from one another, but that such truths can never be stated in a clear and precise way.” 25 I do not have space in this brief essay to consider the spectrum of modern/postmodern reason in relation to classical Aristotelian reason, so I shall focus on Hobbes, the philosopher whose work I believe has been most paradigmatic for the contemporary West. Hobbes may be the most blatant foil to Aristotle, since he directly attacks Aristotle’s formulation of reason and claims to put reason on an entirely different basis, one that is scientifically rigorous and universal. As is well known, Hobbes begins the Leviathan with an account of reason that is fundamentally different from the classical understanding. Hobbes challenges not just the classical understanding of politics and ethics, but the very foundation of how we know things. Chapter 1 of Leviathan establishes definitively for Hobbes that our most primal response to the world is in sensations, and those sensations are not connected to a teleological thread of reason in the way that they are for Aristotle. Hobbes announces: “There is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten by the organs of sense.”26 Shortly following on from this proclamation, Hobbes castigates Aristotle (and Plato) for teaching “another doctrine”: that as far as understanding goes, “the thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, that is an intelligible being seen; which coming into the understanding makes us understand.” The divide between Hobbes and Aristotle is huge. Essentially, Aristotle held that all our perceptions and our thoughts are connected to something real, an order of the cosmos that while opaque to us in some respects, is still categorical for how we know anything at all. When we see

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something, it is because there is something real before us that reveals itself to our senses. Hobbes, on the other hand regards imagination as nothing more than ‘decaying sense’, and what we commonly call understanding, he identifies as “the imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature with the faculty of imagining) by words or other voluntary signs.”27 Reason, Hobbes defines as “nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; I say marking them when we reckon by ourselves; and signifying, when we demonstrate or approve our reckoning to other men.” 28 In this revolutionary reformulation of reason in Hobbes, we begin with senses, we accumulate those senses into an imaginary sequence, and we give words to the sequence to confer meaning on our experiences. There is no way of gauging the truth-claims of these sequences, and each man will formulate his reason in his own experiential way. Indeed, Hobbes thinks it “absurd” that anyone would trust this sequence as in any way furnishing knowledge. Philosophers are useless in telling us anything about how we know, or for that matter, how we ought to live. The connections that Aristotle makes among moral virtue, reason, character and habituation are a ridiculous chimera to Hobbes. He describes the so-called natural philosophy of classical Greece as a “dream rather than a science”, set forth in “senseless and insignificant language”. The moral philosophy of Aristotle (and Plato) he dismisses as “but a description of their own passions”. They make “rules of good and bad by their own liking and disliking, by which means, in so great diversity of taste, there is nothing generally agreed on, but everyone doth, as far as he dares, whatsoever seemeth good in his own eyes.” And most scathing of all: “I believe that scarce anything can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which is now called Aristotle’s Metaphysics, not more repugnant to government than much of that he hath said in his Politics, nor more importantly, than a great part of his Ethics.”29 The implications of Hobbes ‘revolution’ for politics and ethics are well known. We want certainty, and the only way we can get that, according to Hobbes, is by arresting the perpetual motion of bodies and desires by erecting a commonwealth with definitive boundaries and rules. Since all judgments by human beings are relative, and untrustworthy, and since reason in itself is nothing more than an interpretation of the passions for our own self-interest, there is no such thing for Hobbes as a moral sensibility, or the possibility of educating character in a morally reasoning way. We must understand political order as a contract among our passionate and sensory selves, entered into out of fear of death and the

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calculation of avoiding a constant struggle for power. The only way out of natural chaos and relativity is the artifice of the commonwealth. It is the civil law of the commonwealth that will determine “what is honest and dishonest, what is just and unjust, and generally what is good and evil.”30 And, as we know, for Hobbes there is absolutely no way to contravene the civil laws once they are instituted, for the civil laws are the binding conditions of order. We make order and then we are bound by it. One of the most insidious threats to the commonwealth, once constituted, according to Hobbes is the opinion that one can have a private conscience that contravenes the contours of the civil law. In the condition of “mere nature”, Hobbes writes, before there is civil law, it is the case that every man is the sole judge of his own actions, since by nature there is no distinction between good and evil, just and unjust. But once commonwealth is instituted, “it is manifest that the measure of good and evil actions is the civil law; and the judge is the legislator.”31 An individual man’s “conscience and his judgment are the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous”. Therefore, “though he that is subject to no civil law sinneth in all that he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth, because the law is the public conscience by which he has already undertaken to be guided.”32 Hobbes does not care what people think, or choose, within their own small, private space, provided that they do not profess anything that is contrary to the civil law. He has no ambitions to shape character, or make people into the moral and deliberative choosers that Aristotle is so concerned to develop. The passions of hate, lust, ambition, and covetousness, and the crimes they engender, are, according to Hobbes “so obvious to every man’s experience and understanding as there needeth nothing to be said of them”, except that they are “annexed to the nature of both man and all other living creatures”. One might be able to hinder these by an “extraordinary use of reason”, Hobbes concedes, but reason alone “is not perpetually present to resist them.” Only the law backed up by force, can control the ill effects of these passions, but Hobbes does not expect that the law will do anything to mitigate the passions themselves. Unlike Aristotle, Hobbes clearly does not believe that political regimes, laws and authority can have an educative effect on the character habits of human beings. They can have only a deterrent effect on actions. As Waller Newell has captured in the conclusion to his masterful book Tyranny: A New Interpretation, Hobbes mounts “a frontal assault on Aristotle’s maxim that man is by nature a political animal.”33 In constructing a political order, Hobbes tells us that we “should introspect

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about human nature, comparable to Descartes’ call on the self to divest itself of all received tradition in seeking clear knowledge derived from sense-data and observable experience.” Hobbes’ inversion of the purpose of human nature means that he discards Aristotle’s teleological understanding of reason and its place as the apex of what is natural for human beings. “Politics is only about securing the means to selfpreservation, not the seditious issues of who is right about justice, virtue and the entitlement to rule.”34 There are two roads to modernity that Newell identifies as emerging from Hobbes “frontal assault on Aristotle”: enlightenment and totalitarianism.35 As a political realist, Hobbes may be understood as one who abandoned the idealism of the classical political philosophers, and sought to found political community on a rigorous formula that would promote peace, and reign in human ambitions to the private spaces afforded them by a secure and formidable structure of law and authority. Liberalism, for Newell, is the child of Hobbes: it is a “hardheaded realism about about self-interest as the driving force of all political actors and ends in strikingly optimistic prognoses about the coming ‘new global civil society’ of lasting peace, community and equality.” The other road from Hobbes is according to Newell a much darker one, emphasizing the total authority of the state as the definer of justice and good. Because sovereign authority for Hobbes is the definer of justice, that authority is unlimited and cannot be resisted. “[T]he sovereign must have the capacity to inspire terror; to replicate the terror that would spontaneously be experienced when we revert from the social contract to the state of nature with its war of all against all, thereby schooling those foolishly tempted to do so to change their course of action. By replicating this terror institutionally, the Sovereign saves us from ourselves through a salutary dose of fear.”36 There is a great difference between living in a modern liberal democratic state, and a totalitarian state, but nonetheless it is worth considering the parallels of Newell’s Hobbesian paths. As Travis Smith has written, if we begin our inquiry into what human beings are, and we assert, with Hobbes, that we are essentially “fearful and vain pleasure-seekers with little practical experience in the activities of citizenship and little training in the use of words and ideas in public discourse”, we “will be poor judges of what should and can be done by governments to help us enjoy our lives, poor judges of who [we] can trust to make decisions for [us] . . . and poor judges in assessing the decisions persons make on our behalf.”37 If we return to Aristotle, as I think we ought, and employ his understanding of human beings in context, we can grasp that people are very much shaped by the political context in which they are habituated. In

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a Hobbesian world, people may well live out Hobbes’ narrative of passiondriven self-interest, contained by a state apparatus that renders them for the most part apolitical and privatized. This does not however characterize all people, and this story of what we are as human beings does not capture our highest potential. The most serious challenge to Hobbes, I believe, is the evidential one that people are capable of thinking independently, and that they are not necessarily constricted by the iron cage of Hobbes’ logic. It is important to dwell on the totalitarian thread that Newell identifies as coming out of Hobbes. Modernity did go badly wrong in Europe, the home of Enlightenment philosophy and practice. Hannah Arendt, modernity’s greatest commentator and interpreter of totalitarianism, turned at the end of her life to an investigation of thinking as the most likely locus of resistance to this monstrous aberration of human living together. What are we doing when we think, Arendt asks? This question used to belong to philosophy or metaphysics, “two fields on inquiry”, she notes, “that, as we all know, have fallen into disrepute.”38 But as Arendt affirms, it is not “that the old questions which are coeval with the appearance of men on earth have become ‘meaningless’ but that the way they were framed has lost its plausibility”. 39 More specifically (and here one thinks of Hobbes) “what has come to an end is the basic distinction between the sensory and the supersensory, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses – God or Being or the First Principles and Causes (archai) or the Ideas – is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears, that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses.”40 The modes of inquiry by which we used to identify the supra-sensory, and its implications for judgment and justice, may be no longer persuasive (and Arendt here includes traditional metaphysics and established religion), but the experience of thinking has not disappeared from what is human. “Our ability to think is not at stake”, Arendt writes. “We are what men have always been – thinking beings. By this, I mean that men have an inclination, perhaps a need, to think beyond the limitations of knowledge, to do more with this ability than use it as an instrument for knowing and doing.” Thinking, thus described by Arendt, is always “out of order”, that is to say, that it removes itself from the immersion in the immediate. The thinking activity “always deals with absences and removes itself from what is present and close at hand”. This “thinking ego, moving among universals, among invisible essences, is strictly speaking, nowhere: it is homeless in an emphatic sense, which may explain the early rise of a cosmopolitan spirit among the philosophers.” 41

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Arendt claims that “the only great thinker I know of who was explicitly aware of this condition of homelessness as being natural to the thinking activity was Aristotle – perhaps because he spelled out so clearly the difference between acting and thinking.”42 Aristotle called this capacity for thinking the “divine element” in us, which Arendt interprets to mean the experience of the suprasensory and “homeless”. But what does such a “divine element” or the experience of homelessness have to do with the question of justice? For Arendt, and I believe for Aristotle, the need for reason is the need for meaning. “The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same.”43 Thinking so defined is not necessarily a moral engagement, because it is not tied to the moral and political strictures of a particular society, or regime, or cultural context. But it can have profoundly moral consequences. Arendt asks: “Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever comes to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing, or even actually “condition” them against it?”44The absence of thought is not stupidity. Very clever people can lack the capacity to think (or in Aristotle’s language, they may refuse the “‘divine element’ that is the highest expression of their being), and “a wicked heart is not its cause; it is probably the other way round, that wickedness may be caused by absence of thought.”45 The good citizen of the Hobbesian commonwealth is one who takes all interpretations of just and unjust, good and evil, from the state into which he has contracted. Hobbes does not dwell upon the cultivation of character, or on the education to virtue, which Aristotle thought critical to healthy political order. But returning to Aristotle’s understanding of how politics actually works, the parameters of Hobbes’ Leviathan do in actuality habituate a certain kind of citizen: one who, in Travis Smith’s characterization, is privatized, cowering, deferential and unquestioning. Such a citizen is the kind of one that is possibly coopted by a totalitarian regime. Totalitarian domination would be an ever-present threat in a Hobbesian world, and possibly the most likely outcome, if it were not for the very real possibility of the ‘good man’, the possibility of partaking in the ‘divine element’ or the ‘homelessness’ of thinking. It is important to turn back to the classical accounts of reason, because as Arendt remarked, these are our guideposts to thinking our way out of some of the colossal errors of modernity. “Arendt advises us to expect the worst of politics because of the terrifying strength of the idolatrous human imagination. The scarcity of judging and thinking in the general

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population, but especially thinking, provides room for idolatry, and for the crimes of idolatry. But she also insinuates the hope that some of us can individualize our imaginations, and then whether concerted or not, we will offer glimpses and episodes of creative resistance.” 46The most pressing problem of modernity may be thoughtlessness. As Roger Berkowitz writes: “What makes thoughtlessness so dangerous today is the fact – Arendt insists that it is a fact – that we are the first people in history for whom the authority of tradition – like the authority of custom, truth and religion – has evaporated. Malicious men have always and will always exist; yet ordinary albeit thoughtless men could, in earlier times, be restrained from evil by the force of habit, the authority of tradition, even the commands of religion.” 47 Now, we need to encourage the exercise of reason-as-meaning in a much more thoroughgoing way than was required in more stable, traditional kinds of political communities. What Hobbes characterized as “private conscience”, a highly individualistic and selfinterested kind of solipsism, is not the same as thinking. It may be a stretch to ask of ordinary citizens that they pay attention to the ‘divine element’ in their souls, but if Arendt is right that the ability to tell right from wrong has something to do with the capacity to think, “then we must be able to demand its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be.” 48 I return to my opening comments about my student. Thinking as such may not change the world in a dramatic or apocalyptic way, but it certainly can alter the course of individual lives. The capacity to think, in the pursuit of meaning, or virtue, or justice, is not the provenance of classical accounts of reason. It is a universal human capacity. The classical accounts of reason, Aristotle in particular I would argue, are still relevant for us because they invoke this capacity in a language that is intelligible to us if we have the patience for it. As Roger Berkowitz quipped: “Thinking is a difficult business.” But a person can realign herself, through thinking, despite one’s character and habitat, and if one cannot change the world, one can still practise virtue with respect to her family and friends. This is our real freedom as human beings.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Thinking: Volume 1: The Life of the Mind. New York and London. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. 1971 Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans Joe Sachs. Newburyport, MA. Focus Publishing. 2002

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—. The Politics. Trans Carnes Lord. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1984 Bartlett, Robert and Collins, Susan. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: A New Translation. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 2011 Baumann, Fred. “Humanism and Transhumanism”. The New Atlantis. Fall, 2010. Berkowitz, Roger, Katz, Jeffrey and Keenan, Thomas. Eds. Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. New York. Fordham University Press. 2010 Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed Martinich, A.P. Peterborough, Ontario. Broadview Press. 2002 Jacobs, Jonathan. Choosing Character: Responsibility for Virtue and Vice. Ithaca and London. Cornell University Press. 2002 Livingstone, David. Liberal Education, Civic Education and the Canadian Regime. Montreal and Kingston. McGill-Queens University Press. 2015 Newell, Waller. Tyranny: A New Interpretation. Cambridge University Press. 2013 O’Gieblyn, Meghan. “God in the Machine: My Strange Journey Into Transhumanism”. The Guardian. April 18, 2017 Tessitore, Aristide. Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy. Notre Dame, Indiana. Notre Dame University Press. 2002

Notes 1

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (trans. Joe Sachs, Focus Publishing, Newburyport, MA, 2002) 1103a20 2 There are those who contend that we need not accept the limits of our mortality. Ray Kurzweil, possibly the best known of the transhumanists, claims: “The 21st century will be different. The human species along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age old problems . . . and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future.” Cited in Meghan O’Gieblyn, “God in the Machine: My Strange Journey Into Transhumanism”, The Guardian (April 18, 2017) A good response to this comes from Fred Baumann: “[T]he project of transhumanism looks remarkably theological. After all, Kurzweil’s ultimate dream is of men made into gods.” “Humanism and Transhumanism”, The New Atlantis (Fall, 2010) 84 3 Aristotle declares that animals (and bees) can be political, but not in the same way as human beings, who have reason and speech. “[I]t is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things [of this sort]”. Assessing something as good or

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bad, just or unjust, requires deliberation and judgment. The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984) 1253a15 4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a10 5 Jonathan Jacobs, Choosing Character: Responsibility for Virtue and Vice (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2002) 66 6 Jacobs, Choosing Character, 67 7 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a10 8 Aristotle, The Politics, 1332b1 9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1104b30 10 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105b20-30 11 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1112 30 12 Steven Salkever, “The Deliberative Model of Democracy and Aristotle’s Ethics of Natural Questions.”, Aristide Tessitore, ed. Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy (Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002) 355 13 Salkever, “The Deliberative Model of Democracy”, 355 14 Aristotle, The Politics, 1253a20 15 Aristotle, The Politics, 1253a30 16 Aristotle, The Politics, 1253a35 17 Aristotle, The Politics, 1276b25-30 18 Aristotle, The Politics, 1327b20-25 19 Aristotle, The Politics, 1277b5 20 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1177a20 21 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 177b30 22 The dissonance between the good citizen’ and the ‘good man’ is a subject of much debate in Aristotle scholarship, especially as pertains to the issue of morality. It seems pretty clear to me that for Aristotle, the ‘good man’ is not an amoral person. The point is that a person’s moral reasoning is not limited to, although it is strongly influenced by, the political context that he inhabits. I like Susan Collins’ and Robert Bartlett’s depiction of this dissonance. “[W]hen [Aristotle] cautions early in his discussion of justice that the education of the citizen (the education with a view to the community or common good [to koinon]) may not be the same as the education of the good man simply (1130b25-29), he is pointing in the first place not to a tension between moral virtue and some other possibility, but to a tension within moral virtue. He thus clarifies the problem at the heart of civic education: the two ends that demand our devotion as morally serious human beings cannot be fully reconciled.” Susan Collins and Robert Bartlett, “Interpretive Essay”, Robert Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, eds. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: A New Translation (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011) 278 23 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1180a30 24 Salkever, “The Deliberative Model of Democracy”, 352 25 Salkever, “The Deliberative Model of Democracy”, 352 26 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Literary Texts, 2002) 3 27 Hobbes, Leviathan 8

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Hobbes, Leviathan, 18 Hobbes, Leviathan, 369-370 30 Hobbes, Leviathan, 369-370 31 Hobbes, Leviathan, 168 32 Hobbes, Leviathan, 169 33 Waller Newell, Tyranny: A New Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2013) 469 34 Newell, Tyranny, 469-470 35 Newell, Tyranny, 473 36 Newell, Tyranny, 473 37 Travis Smith, “The Hobbesian Foundations of Modern Illiberal Education”, David Livingstone, ed., Liberal Education, Civic Education and the Canadian Regime (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s Press, 2015) 281 38 Hannah Arendt, Thinking. Volume 1: The Life of the Mind (New York and London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971) 8 39 Arendt, Thinking, 10 40 Arendt, Thinking, 10 41 Arendt, Thinking, 199 42 Arendt, Thinking, 199 43 Arendt, Thinking, 15 (italics Arendt’s) 44 Arendt, Thinking, 5 45 Arendt, Thinking, 13 46 George Kateb, “Fiction as Poison”, Roger Berkowitz, Jeffry Katz and Thomas Keenan, eds, Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (New York, Fordham University Press, 2010) 41 47 Roger Berkowitz, “Solitude and the Activity of Thinking”, Roger Berkowitz et. al., Thinking in Dark Times, 238 48 Arendt, Thinking, 13 29

PART TWO: MEDIEVAL POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE CLASSICAL LIBERALISM OF GROTIUS AND HOBBES

CHAPTER SEVEN THE BEST REGIME IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’S DE REGNO PATRICK N. CAIN

Although St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Regno addresses the best form of government and the problem of tyranny, it seems difficult to situate within his broader political thought. In contrast to the Summa Theologica’s explicit endorsement of a mixed regime, De Regno overtly argues for kingship, and does so without any mention of the natural law. It is perhaps not surprising that the new natural law theorists have subordinated De Regno’s political teaching to his theological account in the Summa.1 De Regno itself, however, offers good reasons for treating it as an independent whole with a serious political teaching. Unlike Aquinas’s other works, De Regno takes politics as its primary subject matter, addressing itself to an actual ruler—the king of Cyprus. More importantly, in its introduction, Aquinas claims that he has employed his full ability in writing the treatise, and that the work contains a “careful” exposition of “the origin of kingly government and the things which pertain to the office of a king (Intro.1)”2 This work, he adds, takes into account not only the authority of scriptures, but also the teaching of the philosophers and the practice of worthy princes (Intro, 1).3 Together, these features illustrate the enormity of the task that Aquinas sets for himself in De Regno. Not only does his work aim at incorporating reflections on scripture’s, philosophy’s, and statesmanship’s understanding of the best regime, it also means to address the practical realities of political life, including the possibility of securing government against tyranny. From the outset, Aquinas’s explication of kingly and tyrannical rule, in both word and deed, is tied to an exploration of the proper relationship between theology, rationality, and politics. This relationship is at the crux of Aquinas’s argument that kingship as the best form of government must be recognized by prudence, even as prudence requires a human rule that is distinct from kingship’s authority. By working through

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his treatise I aim to show that Aquinas’s overt endorsement of kingship is accompanied by a more subtle teaching about the difficulties and dangers of attempting to reconcile kingship’s exacting standards with political life.

Kingship, Tyranny, and Polity De Regno begins by presenting itself as a defense of kingship. Chapters 1-3 define kingship by way of a series of ennobling observations about the character of kingship. A king “is one who rules over the community of a city or province, and for the common good” (I.15). Rule by one is the ideal form of government because it provides the unity necessary to direct the move toward its proper end, which is “the good and well-being of a community united in fellowship” (I.15). Kingship’s superiority is supported by scripture (Aquinas cites Ezekiel 37:24 and Ecclesiastes 5:8) and by experience, which shows that “provinces and cities governed by a single king rejoice in peace, flourish in justice and are gladded by an abundance of things” (I.20; Aquinas offers no practical examples of this experience). It is also supported by nature and reason, for “in nature government is always by one,” and “those things are best which are most natural, for in every case nature operates for the best” (I.19). For instance, the body (the heart or head), the soul (reason), and the universe (God) are all ruled by one, and the rule of one is according to reason, since “every multitude is derived from unity” (I.19). Rule by more than one, even at best, can “only approach one” and so cannot be unified (I.18). Chapter 4 turns to the apparent difficulty the potential for tyranny poses to the argument for kingship. A tyrant is “a man who rules without reason according to the lusts of his own soul,” and so “is no different from a beast” (I.29). The tyrant’s concern for his own private good leads him to despise the common good. He suspects “good men rather than bad, and is always afraid of another’s virtue,” which leads him to oppress his subjects in bodily and spiritual matters, thereby undermining fellowship, virtue, and friendship (I.27-29). Unlike kingship, which unifies what is good, tyranny allows for the greatest unification of evil, and therefore the greatest unification of harm. (In contrast, the diversity of ends within democracy make it the least dangerous of the unjust regimes.) The possibility of tyranny is the most significant objection to kingship, for if corrupted, a king will become a tyrant, and tyranny is the worst form of government. On these grounds the choice-worthiness of kingship comes into question Chapter 6 responds to this problem by indicating a willingness to turn away from a whole-hearted commitment to the ideal form of government.

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“We ought,” Aquinas writes, “to avoid that alternative from which great danger is more likely to follow” (I.37). Yet, even by this criteria, he maintains that kingship is the best form of government, arguing that tyranny is less likely to come from the rule of one than from the rule of many, and that kingships that do turn into tyrannies tend to be less extreme than tyrannies which arise from other forms of government. Indeed, “the perils which arise out of government by many are therefore more to be avoided than those which arise out of government by one” (I.37). Kingship appears to be defensible both as the best and as the least dangerous form of government. Chapter 7, however, immediately turns to a discussion of how to best limit the danger of tyranny that Aquinas says is posed by kingship, arguing that the king’s power must be restricted (I.41), and suggesting that the people should have the power to choose, depose, and restrain a king in order to prevent his rule from becoming overly tyrannical (I.44). Chapter 7 therefore leaves the reader with the following problem: if, as Aquinas has argued, it is kingship’s unity that offers us the best and safest form of government, why does he recommend restricting the king’s power by dividing part of it among the least unified political class? What is the relationship between the king and the many, and how can it fit with Aquinas’s endorsement of kingship? The beginning of an answer to this problem is found in Chapter 5, which acts as a bridge between Chapter 4’s definition of tyranny, and Chapter 6’s account of kingship as the least dangerous regime. Chapter 5 begins by noting that a “great many rulers have exerted tyrannical sway under the pretext of royal dignity” (I.30). Clear examples can be found in the Roman commonwealth, where “kings were expelled by the Roman people when they could no longer bear the burden of their rule, or, rather, of their tyranny” (I.30). And doing so was in fact of some benefit, since the liberty that resulted from exchanging kings for aristocratic magistrates and councils led to Rome’s swift growth. The lesson is as follows: it often happens that men living under a king are reluctant to exert themselves for the common good, no doubt supposing that whatever they do for the common good will not benefit them but someone else who is seen to have the goods of the community under his own power. But if no one person is seen to have such power, they no longer regard the common good as if it belonged to someone else, but each now regards it as his own. (I.30)

Chapter 5 would thus seem to raise two significant and intertwined complications for the endorsement of kingship in Chapters 4 and 6. Chapter 4’s objection to the tyrant is that his concern for his private good against the common good obstructs the possibility of virtuous citizens. Yet

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Chapter 5 here notes that kingship likewise tends to lead subjects away from the common good, and in a manner that prevents virtue. Moreover, it is now said that a unified concern for the common good may be better achieved when the rule of the many replaces kingship. Likewise, whereas Chapter 6 describes the change from kingship to tyranny as preferable to the change from the rule of the many to tyranny, here Chapter 5 describes the change from the rule of one to the rule of many as leading to a more virtuous regime, and even to one that is in one sense more secure and more unified, since a greater number of citizens will pursue what they see as the common good. Thus it is that “experience . . . seems to show that a single city governed by rulers who hold office for one year only can sometimes accomplish more than a king can even if he has three or four cities” (I.30). Yet as we will further see, because the many cannot be fully unified in thought or deed, the rule of the many tends to devolve into tyranny. The existence of kingship turns the many away from the common good, and the disunified character of the many requires the unity that defines kinship. It is therefore hard to see how true unity can be achieved in a regime, or how any attempt to reach it can avoid tyrannical means. In practice, kingship cannot join together unity and the common good. Fittingly, Chapter 5 begins to oscillate between the terms king and tyrant. Not only are we now told that many rulers who appear to be kings are really tyrants, we also discover (as we can see above) that Aquinas is willing to call tyrants kings and kings tyrants. For although he began the treatise by strictly defining kingship as having an absolute unity and a complete concern for the common good, his discussion of the Romans indicates that he is willing to loosely apply the term. Beneath this terminological ambiguity lies a deeper teaching. The example of the Romans suggests that while true kingship may be the best form of government in speech, all kings, at least to a certain degree, in practice rule in the manner of tyrants. Strict kingship may by definition the best and safest, but no actual regimes meet this definition in practice. All impli earthly kingships are, in fact, tyrannies. The title of treatise—“On Kingship”—can be read to refer both to the true form of kingship, and to its less than ideal counterpart—“On Tyranny.” Thus it is that Aquinas can describe kingship as the best and safest regime, while simultaneously endorsing the checking, dividing, and sharing of its power with the people in Chapter 7. Chapter 8’s consideration of the king’s proper reward emphasizes the difficulty of separating kingship from tyranny. Kingship must be rewarded, Aquinas argues, because the king’s task of seeking the common

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good “would seem unduly onerous if some good personal to himself were not provided in return” (I.61). Yet if the king needs a reward apart from the proper fulfillment of his position, the lesson would seem to be that he is not completely virtuous, since, rather than being simply led by a concern by the common good, his actions are undertaken, in part at least, for the sake of his private good—a motivation that Aquinas identifies as a defining feature of tyranny. We cannot expect a king to act as though virtue is its own reward. On this understanding, Aquinas takes up Cicero’s and Aristotle’s proposals that the rewards of glory and honour be used to moderate tyranny’s pursuit of pleasure and wealth. Aquinas, however, finds this solution insufficient, arguing that “there seems to be nothing in human affairs more fragile” than these rewards, since they “depend upon human opinion, and there is nothing more changeable in the life of mankind” (I.56).4 Further, he notes that the desire for glory might even lead men to seek “immoderate glory in the commerce of war” (I.57), and that it takes away from the greatness of soul, since “it destroys the liberty of spirit which ought above all to be the goal of the great-souled man, and nothing is more fitting to a prince who is appointed to accomplish good purposes than greatness of soul” (I.56).5 Nevertheless, Aquinas eventually offers his approval of honour as a moderating force. While pursuing glory may lead tyrants to fall into the vice of dissimulation for the sake of appearing virtuous, (“desiring glory, many pretend to be virtuous”), it also “has some vestige of virtue about it, inasmuch as it does at any rate seek to win the approval of good men and to avoid displeasing them” (I.60). In the same way, “given that so few achieve true virtue . . . it would seem more tolerable to choose as a ruler one who is at least restrained from overt wrongdoing by his fear of the judgment of men” (I.60). In other words, true kingship rarely, if ever, falls into tyranny, but almost every practical example of monarchy will be a version of tyranny that seeks a privatecentered reward, and so should be moderated as much as possible— hopefully in a way that leads it to resemble kingship.6 Aquinas’s account holds to Aristotle’s presentation, preserving the ideal without ignoring the lower parts of human nature. Aquinas’s ambiguous use of the term kingship, and the connected distinction he draws between theory and practice, require us to carefully consider which of De Regno’s arguments apply to the best regime and which apply to those regimes that are kingships in name or appearance only. On the basis of this distinction, it is especially necessary to reassess Aquinas’s injunction to avoid the regime “from which great danger is more likely to follow.” If all earthly kingships are actually tyrannies, and

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tyranny is the worst regime, then these kingships cannot be the least dangerous regimes. Better than such monarchies would seem to be the rule of the many, not only because democracy is the least bad of the unjust regimes, but because the rule of the many may be able to take the form of polity (I.22), with the many working according to their view of the common good. Rome, as we saw, benefitted when the many replaced kingship with aristocracy, thereby increasing its liberty. And the regime flourished further when the common people began to participate in rule, and when the large financial distinction between them and the more aristocratic positions was removed. Yet even if polity is the best regime, Aquinas suggests that it lacks the unity necessary to sustain its own rule. Due to internal divisions and wars, Rome fell back into a number of tyrannies (I.33). Aquinas also offers the example of the Hebrews, who, under the rule of judges, pursued virtue individually. Without any unity of purpose, or at least without anyone to unify their purpose, they were exploited “on all sides by their enemies,” and so requested to be ruled by kings, whose vices eventually led them into slavery (I.34). A kingship may be inevitably tyrannical, but without a king, even a good regime cannot unify its pursuit of virtue, and cannot defend itself from external threats. It therefore tends to fall back into tyranny, and often a far worse tyranny than it began with. As Aquinas puts it, in the question of regimes, ‘peril lurks on either side” (I.35). Chapters 6-8 should therefore be read as aiming at mitigating some of these dangers. The people, writes Aquinas, should have the legal power to both choose the king and remove him, should his tyranny become too harsh (I.48-49). If legalized, the exercising of the elective and removal power would not only protect the people’s ability to preserve their freedom to pursue the common good, it would restrain the king’s wrongdoing, for he would desire the people’s praise, and fear their judgment. In this way, the rule of the many could be combined with monarchy’s unity in a way that could direct its power toward good and away from evil through both punishments and rewards. Aquinas thus points toward a constitutionally mixed regime as best able to avoid the problem of extreme tyranny, whether its origin is kingly or democratic.7

Scripture, Philosophy, and the Ideal Regime If Aquinas’s ambiguous defense of kingship requires us to reconsider his teaching that kingship is the best and most secure practical possibility, it also seems to require a reconsideration of Chapters 1-4’s defense of kingship as the ideal regime. Does an ideal regime exist, and, if so, in what

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form? In his introduction to De Regno, Aquinas promises to address this question, along with the origin of kingship, according to both “the authority of divine scripture” and “the teachings of the philosophers” (I.Intro). Do philosophy and scripture agree about the best regime? These questions return us to the question raised by Aquinas in the first chapter’s opening sentence: “we must begin by explaining how the title ‘king’ is to be understood” (I.2). Chapter 1 begins with a philosophic account of the relationship between nature and reason, noting that though we have natural end, we are in need of something to guide us toward it. This is provided by nature in the form of reason, which has the power to direct us to our end (I.3). Indeed, reason is so powerful, that “if it were proper for man to live in solitude, as many animals do, he would need no other guide towards his end; for each man would then be a king unto himself, under God, the supreme king, and would direct his own actions by the light of reason divinely given to him” (I.4). De Regno’s first definition of kingship thus consists in ruling oneself absolutely through reason, a definition that is both according to the nature of kingship and the nature of reason.8 But elsewhere, Aquinas ascribes this view to Socrates, and critiques him for reducing virtue to knowledge.9 And, as we will see, Aquinas will here go on to say that such rule is not according to human nature. Aquinas follows this description of kingship with a second rationalist argument. In the same way that all things require a ruling principle that unites its diverse parts into a whole, diverse individuals must be united by one thing that rules. That one thing is reason: For by a certain order of Divine providence all bodies in the material universe are ruled by the primary, that is the celestial, body, and all bodies by rational creatures. Also, in one man the soul rules the body, and, within the soul, the irascible and concupiscible appetites are ruled by reason. Again, among the members of the body there is one ruling part, either the heart or the head which moves all others. It is fitting, therefore, that in every multitude there should be some ruling principle (I.9).

Echoing Socrates’ argument in Plato’s Republic, De Regno here makes the soul an image for politics in a way that suggests Socrates’ claim that the best and most reasonable regime is the one ruled by philosophers, whose souls are in turn most ruled by reason (a fitting name for Plato’s Republic would be On Kingship). 10 Ultimately, however, Aquinas says that individual reason is not a sufficient ruler of human beings, both because our individual bodies cannot complete the work needed to survive, and because our individual reason cannot achieve the complete understanding necessary for reason to fully rule either over ourselves or others (I.6-7).

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Because of these limits, we are social and political animals (I.4) and must live in a community, which not only helps secure the needs of body, but also provides the opportunity for shared speech, through which one “can reveal the whole content of one’s mind to another,” thereby improving one’s reason through fellowship (I.7). Reflecting Aristotle’s claim that the only alternative to living according to one’s political nature is to live as a beast or a god (Pol. 1253a27), Aquinas rejects the possibility of human beings fulfilling the definition of kingly rule (the absolute rule of reason), thereby leaving God as the only legitimate example of a king (I.4) Aquinas’s use of scripture is also less than straightforward. Although his references to the Bible seem to be designed to show its support for kingship as the best regime, they at the same time bringing it into question. For instance, when Aquinas defines the king as “one who rules over the community of a city or province, and for the common good,” he supports the definition by quoting Ecclesiastes 5:8 to the effect that “the king commands all the lands subject to him’” (I.15). However, Ecclesiastes 5:7 makes clear that 5:8 is actually a warning against kingship: “If thou shalt see the oppressions of the poor, and violent judgments, and justice perverted in the province, wonder not at this matter: for he that is high hath another higher, and there are others still higher than these: the king commands all the lands subject to him.” 11 In other words, the king’s command over the lands entails the perversion of justice. Ambiguity is also present when Aquinas cites Ezekiel 37:24 in support of his argument that kingship must be numerically one: “David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd” (I.12). Despite appearances, this is not a reference to David’s kingly rule (by the time of Ezekiel, King David has come and gone), but is rather God’s promise, in the face of the failure of the Davidic line of kings, that he will provide a new David, who “shall be . . . prince forever” (37:25). Likewise, although Aquinas uses Isaiah 40:6 to critique the glory and honour offered by the political community as insufficient rewards for a virtuous ruler (22), one finds that the rest of the chapter actually endorses honour or glory as a sufficient reward for a king if it is provided by God (40:5,10). Moreover, it contains one of the key prophesies of Christ’s coming (40:3) and establishes God as the sole ruler, whose superior knowledge and power makes it impossible to call any earthly ruler a king in the true sense of the word (40:10, 22-28). 12 Just as Aquinas’s more philosophic discussion suggests that only God can fulfill the definition of true kingship, his use of the scriptures suggests both a critique and endorsement of kingship. It seems that the only true king is God. Reason and scriptures are in

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agreement: true kingship is not possible for any human being who is not also divine.13

Divine Rule and Politics The relationship between temporal and divine rule is first addressed directly as a theme in Chapter 9. Whereas Chapter 8 left us with the problem that no earthly thing can be a sufficient reward for a king, Chapters 9-12 argue that God’s rule solves this problem inasmuch as his kingdom provides both honour appropriate to any level of virtue, and blessedness, which is the highest reward a good ruler can receive. These chapters also warn rulers of the punishments that will befall them if they do not submit to divine authority or act against the common good. Tyrants will be “deprived of the most excellent blessedness,” and will acquire “the greatest degree of torment” (I.87). Their injustice will lead to a solitary life; ruling by fear rather than love will prove to be both a poor foundation for their safety and an obstacle to what they truly long for, since the character of such rule will mean that “no matter how much they may desire it, tyrants cannot secure the good of friendship” (I.78). It is therefore desirable that the ruler present himself to the people as a king rather than a tyrant (I.92). Chapters 13-15 further draw out the relationship between the human and the divine. Chapters 13-14 argue that the true king must found a kingdom as well as rule it (just as God created and rules the world), a task that Aquinas’s discussion implies is impossible for human beings to fulfill; no human kingly founder can truly begin from the beginning, for one can not provide oneself with human citizens to rule, nor provide them with the ideal city to live in from the beginning, (I.100). Chapter 15 turns from kingly founding to governing, arguing that because it belongs to the king to direct human beings to their proper end of divine blessedness, true kingship consists of divine rule: Because the enjoyment of Divinity is an end which a man cannot attain through human virtue alone, but only through Divine virtue, according to the Apostle at Romans 6:23: ‘The grace of God is eternal life’, it is not human but Divine rule that will lead us to this end. And government of this kind belongs only to that King who is not only man, but also God: that is, to our lord Jesus Christ, Who by making men sons of God, has led them to the glory of heaven. (I.109)

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Having thus finally explicitly revealed the fully divine character of the best form of government, Aquinas almost immediately notes that Christ’s rule is not direct, but is rather entrusted to the Church: The administration of this kingdom, therefore, is entrusted not to earthly kings, but to priests, so that spiritual and earthly things may be kept distinct; and in particular to the Supreme Priest, the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom all the kings of the Christian people should be subject, as if to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. (I.110)

Insofar as he is Christ’s Vicar, the Roman Pontiff can rule over kings. Yet the rule of kings belongs to priests as well; in fact, all Christians can be called kings and priests in a certain respect (I.110). De Regno thus concerns the rule of the Church at least as much as it concerns the king of Cyprus, and we may read a number of Aquinas’s earlier remarks as directed toward the rule of the Church.14 If the Church rules over kings, it is in turn ought to be ruled by its understanding of Christ. De Regno appeals to scripture’s authority, but shows that authority to be in need of interpretation. The priest’s primary role is to instruct kings in the divine law (I.116-7), and Aquinas notes in Chapter 15 that Christianity flourished in Gaul in part because the Gauls customarily gave its interpreters of the law significant authority (I.113). To the extent that the Church is ruled by such interpretations it is ruled by theologians, De Regno shows in word and deed that these same theologians may give advice to kings, at least on matters concerning the ruler’s relationship to God, philosophy, and the scriptures.15 What then remains of earthly rule? Aquinas says that the king is subject to priests “so that spiritual and earthly things may be kept distinct.” Chapter 16 reveals that while this distinction involves the earthly king’s submission to the authority of the Church in spiritual matters, it at the same time makes his political rule independent: If…he who is responsible for a final end must govern those who are responsible for the things directed towards that end and must direct them by his command, it is clear that the king, just as he must be subject to the lordship and governance administered by the priestly office, must rule over all human occupations and direct them by his own command and rule (I.114).

Aquinas noted in Chapter 15 that while the old law put priests under the rule of princes, the new law makes kings subject to priests (I.111). Here he clarifies that (perhaps in contrast to the rule of kings over priests) the rule of priests over kings must leave room for earthly kings to employ their

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own judgment over the human things. Aquinas then identifies three significant areas that especially belong to the discretion of politics: good administration, the laws and rewards that that direct toward virtue, and securing the peace against internal and external enemies (I.120). The church may by right rule over earthly kings in spiritual matters, but in so doing it must leave a near absolute space for prudence to rule in the affairs of politics, just as the king must refrain from attempting to rule over spiritual matters. Kings, of course, may only appear to submit to the rightful rule of the church, employing the vice of dissimulation for the sake of appearing virtuous. However, their doing so, if properly moderated, would nevertheless maintain the distinction between spiritual and human kings. Because the less than ideal must be expected, De Regno directs the reader toward the necessary connection between virtue, prudence, and the ruler’s self-interest.

Notes 1

For examples, see John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 262; Mark C. Murphy, “Consent, Custom, and the Common Good in Aquinas's Account of Political Authority,” The Review of Politics 59 (1997): 323-350; James M. Blythe, “The Mixed Constitution and the Distinction between Regal and Political Power in the Work of Thomas Aquinas,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 547-565. Scholars who treat as a De Regno as a text in its own right include Marc Guerra, “Beyond Natural Law Talk: Politics and Prudence in St. Thomas’s On Kingship,” Perspectives on Political Science 31 (2002): 8-14; and Michael D. Breidenbach and William McCormick, “Aquinas on Tyranny, Resistance, and the End of Politics,” Perspectives on Political Science 44 (2015): 10-17. 2 St. Thomas Aquinas, in Aquinas: Political Writings, translated by R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Hereafter cited parenthetically by book and paragraph number. 3 Contrast De Regno’s opening with the first question of the Summa and the subsequent distinction Aquinas makes between practical and speculative studies within theology, including his claim that sacred doctrine focuses on the latter because “it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts.” The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920), I.I.4. 4 Friendship as described at I.7 would help to solve many of the difficulties identified posed by honour and glory that Aquinas identifies. At I.77-79 friendship is pointed to as a better reward than honour, and even as necessary for a move to a good and stable regime.

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Although honour may be the greatest of external goods, Aristotle says the great souled individual cares little for external goods (1124a17). In the same vein, Aquinas teaches that such a great souled being “does not seek honour and glory as something great, as if they were a sufficient reward for virtue” (I.60). 6 Aquinas later notes that tyrants may rule in a way that is reminiscent of true kingship: “Aristotle, in his Politics, having listed a number of tyrants, shows that the dominion of all of them came to an end in a short time and that, if some of them did reign for longer than others, this was because they did not carry their tyranny to extremes but in many respects imitated the moderation of kingship” (I.82). 7 Aquinas endorses a mixed regime in the Summa Theologica at I.II.105 and at I.II.95. 8 It is noteworthy that while the passage begins by identifying nature as the source of reason, it ends by identifying God as the deeper source. 9 In the Summa, Aquinas critiques Socrates for his attempt at self-sufficiency: “Accordingly some held that all the active principles in man are subordinate to reason in this way. If this were true, for man to act well it would suffice that his reason be perfect. Consequently, since virtue is a habit perfecting man in view of his doing good actions, it would follow that it is only in the reason, so that there would be none but intellectual virtues. This was the opinion of Socrates, who said "every virtue is a kind of prudence," as stated in Ethic. vi, 13. Hence he maintained that as long as man is in possession of knowledge, he cannot sin; and that every one who sins, does so through ignorance. Now this is based on a false supposition” (I.II.58.2). 10 Chapter 14 returns to the soul as an image of kingship. 11 All biblical quotations not from De Regno are from the Douay-Rheims translation (Baltimore: John Murphy Company, 1899). 12 Isaiah’s chapter identifies God as the founder of his kingdom, and Chapter 14 calls founding a necessary condition for true kingship. 13 The last line of De Regno’s Introduction foreshadows this conclusion. 14 For instance, the discussion of the reward of the king in Chapters 8-9 would imply that a priest or Pope that replaces his care for the glory of God with the glory of men would destroy the freedom allows him to properly direct those in his care toward the common good. 15 In his Introduction, Aquinas says that De Regno’s arguments are in keeping with “his office and calling.”

CHAPTER EIGHT HUGO GROTIUS’ MODERN CIVIL RELIGION: SOURCE OF EUROPE’S STOIC LIBERALISM? JEREMY SETH GEDDERT

Classical Europe is often credited with originating political life. Five hundred years before Christ, Ancient Greece and Rome initiated the notion that citizens could govern themselves. Cleisthenes and Brutus fought for regimes in which no person would hold royal status or stand above the law. The Acropolis and the Forum remain among the world’s most iconic sites: they draw tourists, inspire political reformers, and lend their names to modern arenas. These two classical examples are commended to schoolchildren as the birthplace of today’s cherished liberties. If classical Europe inaugurated political life, modern Europe bequeathed us its current form. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia not only concluded the Thirty Years’ War, but is also said to have birthed the modern nation-state system. First, its treaties enshrined the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which mandated religious noninterference by outside authorities. This international pluralism ultimately led to domestically tolerant regimes of individual liberty. Second, nation-states then wrote constitutions protecting freedoms of association, speech, religion, and a host of other claims. Third, among these other eventual claims was that of universal suffrage, extending political participation throughout entire linguistically-unified regions. If classical Europe was the great-grandmother of democracy, its modern descendant might be hailed as the mother of the nation-state. Yet the modern nation-state is not simply a chip off the old block, or even a digitization of the Twelve Tables. First, the character of ancient liberty is decidedly different from the modern. Benjamin Constant famously argued that ancient liberty meant the ability to participate in government. But it did not mean tolerance or security of person. Ancient Athenian citizens were all entitled to vote in the assembly; a majority of

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them famously – and illiberally – voted to execute Socrates. In contrast, modern polities bind their assemblies to act for liberty.1 Second, the best thinkers of the ancient world were indirect critics of the rule of law, or at least of lawyers. Plato’s Socrates repeatedly asserts that true justice is beyond definition, and Aristotle’s spoudaios practices a prudence that varies by situation and avoids one-size-fits-all charters of rights. 2 By contrast, modern nation-states hold dear their written documents and mantras – all simple enough for democrats to comprehend. Third, the exercise of citizenship in ancient politics differs from the demands of today. Ancient democracies invited citizens to participate in their legislatures, and thus were limited in number by the physical size of their assembly. They granted citizenship only to male landowners. In contrast, modern democracies invite citizens only to choose representatives, which permits participation over a geographic scope that the ancients would have called an empire. 3 Modern states thus extend citizenship to include all adults. In sum, modern democracies are distinguished from ancient by their individual rights, written documents, and mass participation. (One almost wonders if foreign DNA entered the lineage somewhere.) If the blood of the Thirty Years’ War brought forth the modern nationstate, one of the midwives attending this labour was surely the Dutch politician and intellectual polymath Hugo Grotius. Grotius is sometimes forgotten today as a crucial figure in this new birth, but he was well known to his contemporaries far and wide. Already learned by the age of fifteen, this prodigy was pronounced “the miracle of Holland” by King Henry IV. In his twenties, he published works of poetry, history, theology, jurisprudence, and international law. In his thirties, he rose to prominence as de facto Prime Minister Oldenbarnevelt’s right-hand man, only to find his political stand bringing him a life sentence. He witnessed the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in chains. After a daring prison break, he was exiled from his country, but immediately granted a royal pension in Paris by Louis XIII. In 1625 he published his magisterial de Jure Belli ac Pacis, a comprehensive treatise seeking a peaceful resolution to the War ravaging the continent. This work attained for Grotius such pan-European renown that in 1634 the Swedes named this Dutchman their ambassador to France. Shortly after Grotius’ 1645 death, the University of Heidelberg installed Samuel von Pufendorf as its first chair in the Law of Nature and Nations, a field thought to have been established by Grotius. Twentieth-century scholars still recognized him as the father of international law, and organizers of a 1983 conference celebrating his quatercentenary chose a simple but apt title: “Hugo Grotius – A Great European”.4

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In the twenty-first century, scholars increasingly credit Grotius with not only historic but also philosophic import: inventing modern natural rights. Titans such as Richard Tuck paint a portrait in which Grotius advances each of the three distinctively modern elements of the state. First, Grotius rejects the classical teleology of Aristotle in favor of a modern deontological science of liberties. Gone is classical natural Right; taking its place are modern individual rights. Second, Grotius’ justice no longer requires attaining internal virtues, but only declining to externally violate others’ property and person.5 Hence, justice no longer resides in the soul of the wise ruler, but in formulations of law. Third, one of Grotius’ individual rights is the necessity of consent to political subjection. Hence, all those governed by the state must be permitted to participate in its elections. In this story, Grotius makes modern Europe possible precisely by relegating virtue to the private sphere and thus liberating politics from questions of the soul. In what follows, I argue that Grotius’ philosophic legacy has a somewhat different character. He does indeed provide a foundation for a basic set of secular natural rights. Yet in addition to these natural rights, he frequently speaks of a “wider” virtue – often in curiously indirect fashion. This language complicates the standard portrait of a Grotius who lowers the political standard and eliminates virtue. Indeed, Grotius subtly insinuates that the maintenance of natural rights actually depends on this wider virtue.6 What is more, Grotius makes his case by copiously citing classical authors – in one instance translating verbatim three chapters of Aristotle in the midst of his own work.7 His modern natural rights seem not a moon eclipsing classical natural Right but a moon reflecting it. This reading raises an obvious question: if Grotius does not introduce natural rights as a way to eclipse virtue, then why does he bother with them at all? Perhaps the answer has less to do with ontology and more with epistemology. Natural rights are a way of simplifying moral rules in a way that makes them comprehensible to many if not all. After all, few want to wrestle with the subtleties of Socratic discourses when trying to determine a case in small claims court. Yet Grotius also restricts this simplification of moral rules to matters of external property and person; it does not apply to internal virtue. This reveals his recognition that virtue is not so much a modern doctrine – comprehensive or otherwise – as it is a classical vision or intuition of the Good. Moreover, the highest realm of human virtue is now free from imposition by a political realm whose rules are typically formulated by the many (as Socrates knew all too well). In sum, I will argue that Grotius develops individual rights in order to cultivate a minimum level of virtue in the mass populace now invited to

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participate in modern politics, while simultaneously preserving the possibility of a nondogmatic wider virtue for those capable of it. These dual aims are grounded in a distinction he borrows from the Stoics, whose influences on Grotius have been the focus of recent scholarship. This ethical distinction separates the rules of the many and the virtue of the few. Through this distinction, Grotius employs his classical European heritage to shape a modern Europe true to its roots.

Dual Grotian Justice: Rights and Virtue Grotius begins the body of his De Jure Belli ac Pacis (The Right of War and Peace) with a chapter entitled, “What is jus [or ‘Right’]?” In exploring the question, he concludes that justice has two parts. This follows Aristotle and his medieval heirs. Aristotle first outlines “arithmetic” justice (which Aquinas would later term “commutative”), which governs transactions between individuals. He then discusses “geometric” justice (or Aquinas’ “distributive” justice), which considers how the state honours worthy individuals. In other words, commutative justice is private justice, and distributive justice is public justice. Grotius likewise divides justice in two. Yet he proposes different category names: “strict” and “wider” justice. These new names correspond to a different criterion by which to delineate the two categories. The most basic division of justice is not, pace Aristotle, private vs public justice. Rather, the division concerns the “matter at hand”. Grotius states that the matter at hand in strict justice is “to give each his due”. By defining the matter this way, Grotius keeps strict justice simple and intelligible. It is nothing but the familiar classical definition of justice. In fact, Aristotle and Aquinas had used this definition to encompass both sub-categories of justice: private and public.8 Grotius’ strict justice is so called for several reasons. First, it is strictly concerned with external, visible acts. It need not examine the character of the person on whom the just duty or liberty falls. A bad person may exercise the same liberty as a good one. Strict justice is not a matter of changing one’s character; it is a matter of fulfilling an act. For this reason, Grotius describes strict justice as “perfect”; it can be carried out perfectly, even by one whose character is far from ideal.9 Second, strict justice can be formulated in propositions that fully capture its essence. It mandates duties that are meticulous and provides liberties that are specific. In its exactitude, strict justice precisely determines whether a person’s acts conform to its dictates or deviate from them. Moreover, strict justice is clear, allowing lawmakers to enshrine its

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dictates in an authoritative code of law and thus to make them available to all. Indeed, strict justice is promulgated more as reminder than as education. Its hearers should already know its content, because that content is available to them in pure reason. Strict justice reveals itself to the unassisted human mind, regardless of time, place, and context. Experts and novices alike can attain to its truths, just as both adults and children can perform basic arithmetic. Strict justice needs no specific wisdom or expert interpretation, even by lawmakers; it only needs to be read. The third element of strict justice follows from this accessibility: its provisions are mandatory for all. Strict justice does not simply govern experts in political thought; it imposes legitimate demands on all. None of its subjects can legitimately claim ignorance of its duties. Nor can its subjects quibble with the content, because its duties command restraint rather than action. As Grotius says, they are just “in a negative rather than a positive sense”.10 Hence, these duties cannot be accused of imposing a comprehensive doctrine on their subjects, or causing those subjects to actively violate their consciences. Finally, the duties of strict justice are few in number: five. One renders to others their due by respecting the life and property of others; returning unjustly-taken property; providing restitution; keeping promises; and punishing those who violate the above.11 Yet if Grotius’ strict justice has included both the private and public realms, it has not necessarily included all private and public acts.12 Indeed, some such acts are instead overseen by “wider” justice, which Grotius variously renders as “attributive”, “rectoral”, “governmental”, or “internal” justice. But what public or private acts could be part of justice if they are not already included in the aforementioned “matter at hand” of giving someone their due? What is the remaining matter of wider justice? What is (its) material? Grotius declines to set out this matter in clear and perfect terms, such that its content has vexed some scholars and eluded scores more. 13 Strangely enough, this murkiness seems appropriate. After all, if strict justice is defined by its clarity, wider justice could not partake of the same. Yet perhaps the answer to the matter is nonetheless hiding in plain sight. This wider justice – here styled “attributive” – attends to “those virtues that do good to others, such as liberality, mercy, and prudence in governing.”14 The term “virtue” is crucial. Perfect justice had required no special virtue: no expertise to interpret its provisions, no long list of duties whose fulfillment is intangible or ongoing, and no heroism to perform positive acts of virtue. Indeed, strict justice did not necessarily require any virtue of the will at all. One needed only to carry out an act – perhaps

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grudgingly or even under compulsion. Grotius’ seemingly casual mention of virtue in wider justice is in fact its essence. Grotius both clarifies and expands on this answer when he says that the “largest extent” of jus “obliges us to that which is good and commendable.” This goodness and commendableness again forms a contrast with strict justice.15 The mere absence of infractions may render one passively innocent of legal wrongdoing, but it does not qualify one as actively “good”. For instance, if a Prime Minister chooses Cabinet ministers at random from his caucus, he is innocent of violating rights; each minister meets the criterion of being a Parliamentarian, and no individual member could claim a strict right to any Cabinet seat. But such a Cabinet-maker would fail to be commendable under attributive justice because of his unwise choices. What is more, wider justice does not simply give what is due; it may also give more than what is strictly due. For example, if a Prime Minister spends her weekends volunteering at a soup kitchen, she would be going above and beyond what her electors could demand by right. Wider justice calls for a sacrificial giving that demonstrates goodness. It does not simply render to others as a duty, but it gives to others as a gift. In doing so, it both demonstrates and cultivates virtue in the one who exercises it.

Dual Stoic Ethics: Kathekon and Katorthoma This dual sense of justice calls into question the standard portrait of Grotius as a mere subjective rights theorist who burns his bridges with classical natural Right. True, Grotius’ strict justice may blaze a trail for a modern concept of individual liberty. Yet his wider justice seems to leave intact the pathway to classical virtue. Nonetheless, if this wider justice builds on the classics, it does not tread exactly the path of Aristotle. When Grotius outlines justice, he cites thinkers Roman in equal measure to those Greek. These debts to Rome have been the focus of increased scholarly attention, particularly in the work of Benjamin Straumann. Straumann suggests that Grotius’ treatment is heavily Stoic, and particularly explores Grotius’ use of Cicero’s dialogue De Finibus. In De Finibus, Cicero’s Cato sets out what Straumann calls the “entire ethical system of the Stoa”. 16 This system begins with oikeiosis: a recognition of oneself. This might appear a rather solid foundation for a modern science of individual duties and rights. Yet the reality is more complex. As Straumann himself outlines, this recognition of oneself as a person points toward a teleological philosophical anthropology that

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contains two elements. These two facets of human nature will, in turn, point toward two elements of ethical practice: kathekon and katorthoma. The first element of human nature is indeed the human animal impulse toward self-preservation. Here humans pursue tangible goods not valuable for their own sake, but only useful for their extrinsic benefit to selfpreservation – that is, their instrumentality to private preferences. This corresponds to the ethical category of kathekon, sometimes translated as “appropriate action”. In De Finibus, Cicero states that kathekon does not correspond to what is truly good or what fully accords with human nature.17 A wider Stoic treatment of kathekon confirms this Ciceronian reading while also broadening it. For instance, Stobaeus and Diogenes Laertius extend kathekon (here rendered as “proper function”) to non-human animals.18 To them, kathekon is an external act carried out by a sentient being, but not necessarily a voluntary act. Acts of kathekon are reasonable in the sense that they actually do conduce to self-preservation. Yet this reasonable principle may manifest itself in the form of instinct or inclination rather than self-conscious logic. To take an obvious example, animals are capable of preserving themselves and their species without reason. However, many humans also merely follow a rule by habit (Plato’s doxa) rather than through determining for themselves its conformity to human ends (Plato’s nous). As Long and Sedley point out, kathekon does not refer…to the doer’s disposition or whole plan of life.”19 It is an act not carried out in conscious awareness of its role in a full human life. However, Stoic philosophical anthropology does not end here. Its second component does point to what is highest in human nature: that which transcends animal instinct. This requires an ascent to katorthoma. Katorthoma is a special function of kathekon that is sometimes rendered as “perfect proper functions”. But katorthoma is not merely the complete performance of the aforementioned acts of self-preservation. Rather, its perfection is “illustrated by reference to virtues”. The virtue of katorthoma “evaluates the moral character of the agent.”20 Hence, the perfection of katorthoma comes not from the act, but from the character of the human agent that carried it out. To be precise, a katorthomatic action is carried out not for its extrinsic benefits, but for intrinsic motives. In fact, the doer of katorthoma is agnostic about the consequences of the act; he carries out the act even if there is no extrinsic benefit. This befits its central place in a Stoic ethics that is ultimately concerned with “a transformation in one’s motivational orientation.”21 For this reason, the mere actions of katorthoma, “taken by themselves, provide no means of distinguishing two moral classes of men.”22 Stobaeus

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illustrates this point by quoting Chrysippus: “the man who progresses to the furthest point performs all kathekon without exception and omits none.” The undiscerning observer – perhaps one lacking katorthoma – may see the man of katorthoma as merely a man of kathekon. Yet there remains a crucial underlying difference. To continue Chrysippus’ words, “happiness supervenes [in the same man’s life] when these intermediate actions acquire the additional properties of firmness and tenor and their own particular fixity.”23 The man of katorthoma acts in ways that flow from his settled character. In Aristotle’s terms, he is not merely continent but actively virtuous. In other words, the goodness of his action is not simply a matter of his acts. If he grudgingly gives away his goods upon pain of legal enforcement, his act is right but his will is not actively good. This would be mere kathekon. Hence, a disposition of katorthoma may sanctify even the most prosaic acts of kathekon. Even simple acts such as “talking, walking about, leaving town, and the like” may be katorthomatic if animated by internal virtues such as prudence.24 Hence, while acts of kathekon are legitimate and even good, they are not the fullness of human existence. In the words of Cicero, “the former [kathekon] are means to the latter [katorthoma].”25 The former are “nature’s primary requirement, but not…the ultimate good, since [katorthoma] is not present in the first affiliations of nature.” 26 Katorthoma may not be temporally first, but it is ontologically primary. The relation between these two Stoic categories highlights the nonpropositional character of the latter. Merely following a rule to complete a tangible duty is no guarantee of virtue. The act is immediately verifiable by the five senses, but the virtue that may have motivated the act is not. Virtue transcends rule-following. This dual Stoic concept of human nature is almost exactly that of Grotius. Grotius begins his study of human nature by stating that it prompts men – like animals – to their own advantage: this is Stoic oikeiosis. Men are given a reason that deduces “general principles”, in order for each to pursue this interest in peace with others. These general principles are the content of Grotius’ strict justice, and they outline the rules by which interests may licitly compete. However, Grotius then states that humans are most clearly distinguished from animals not by such calculative reason, but by a moral judgment of good and bad and a prudent imagination of the future. Accordingly, natural Right also has a wider extent, which prudently considers persons and manages political affairs. It involves active judgment, rather than merely leaving others in quiet possession of their rights. 27 This grounds Grotius’ wider justice, which involves honestum: that which is honourable or commendable.28

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Grotius later illustrates this implicit distinction between kathekon and katorthoma through two subsequent concepts. The first is his jurisprudential distinction between the “deed” and the “doer”. One may commit an unjust deed by coming into invalid possession of a title deed. A common example is the refusal of one contracted party to pay what the other party demands, due to a sincere misunderstanding of the ambiguous contract terms. The law demands that such a person satisfy the debt in civil court, and no more. Such redress effectively undoes the initial unjust act of possession. In contrast with the unjust deed, one becomes an unjust doer if one knowingly steals from another. Such a person is liable not simply to civil damages but to criminal sanction.29 What is more, in such a case the law cannot stipulate a particular sentence in advance, because the punishment does not address the external act but the internal character of the offender. The distinction between civil redress and criminal punishment delineates external act from internal intent in much the same fashion as kathekon and katorthoma. The second illustrative concept is Grotius’ extensive discussion of “external” and “internal” justice in regard to waging war. External justice permits a wide range of military acts, as long as the cause of the war is just. After all, the targets of the war have forfeited their rights through their prior injustice, and the just warriors are entitled to defend their own lives as they prosecute the campaign. Here self-preservation permits to the just warrior all manner of killing, despoiling, pillaging, and conquering. Yet internal justice nonetheless enjoins the warrior to fight according to the virtue of moderation or “humanity”, exercising equity and even mercy toward her opponents. For example, the katorthomatic warring party inflicts harm only to punish, rather than to satisfy animalistic desires of revenge – even if the physical harm itself appears identical in either case. Hence, the punisher is careful to connect the imposed suffering to the subject’s prior unjust act. She also refrains from imposing a death sentence that would prevent any future reformation of the subject. Again, such punitive war cannot be a one-size-fits-all punishment enshrined in legal codes that apply uniformly to all. External justice permits a wide range of licit acts of kathekon, but internal justice calls for both restraint and prudence out of a of katorthomatic intention.30 Hence, Grotius’ concept of justice incorporates a public virtue that is broadly familiar both to Aristotle and the Stoics, and obsolete to their modern critics. However, his specific treatment of virtue in conjunction with justice appears to depart from Aristotle to join the Stoics. When Grotius introduces a strict justice that coheres with kathekon, he develops a modern-looking approach of propositional formulations and individual

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rights. Yet by adding a wider justice that builds on katorthoma, he conserves the classical understanding of nonpropositional natural Right. Grotius’ overall treatment of Stoic ethics requires us to explore one further Stoic concept that he does not adopt so straightforwardly. It is easy to focus on the distinction between the lesser kathekon and the greater katorthoma. Yet for the Stoics, one who merely follows the rules of kathekon actually falls within the penumbra of human wisdom. While kathekon may not be intrinsically good, it nonetheless partakes of goodness, because it follows a rational principle despite its own ignorance of that source of reason (such as when an animal pursues the preservation of its species). Unlike animals, humans have the choice to reject reason – and many do. Those who actually do choose kathekon earn some association with wisdom because so many others fail to do even this much. Indeed, Stoic ethics divides “all mankind into two absolute categories, the wise and the foolish”, and considers the wise (including doers of kathekon) to be extremely rare throughout history.31 Even kathekon is a rarity. This Stoic attitude displays a classical elitism, perhaps one akin to a Platonic pessimism about the prevalence of true virtue, born of the obvious despondency of a city that condemned Socrates to death. While the thrust of the present argument is to show Grotius’ broad continuity with classical Greece and his specific continuity with Stoicism, we now reach a point where Grotius breaks with both. Grotius’ strict justice aligns closely with the propositional Stoic concept of kathekon. Yet for Grotius, this very simple propositionality renders it comprehensible to all, much like the truths of basic arithmetic. Because everyone can understand it, everyone can be expected to follow it (and for that reason coerced to follow it). 32 Grotius effectively argues that while the vast majority are not capable of katorthoma, they are yet capable of kathekon. While Grotius shares the classical view that the many are inadequate to the highest sense of internal virtue, he believes that they are nonetheless capable of following basic rules that are obvious to unassisted reason. Grotius’ belief in the wide capacity to kathekon enables the third element of the modern nation-state: its extension of citizenship to all adults.

The Soul of Christianity: Not Dogma But Virtue Grotius’ extension of political participation to the masses finds a thick parallel in his Christian theology. Despite Grotius’ common reputation as a secularist, he in fact wrote works of political theology, ecclesiology, Scriptural drama, Atonement doctrine, and Biblical exegesis. One such work is de Imperio (On the Governing Authority of the Supreme Powers

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Concerning Sacred Things), an ostensible treatise of political theology that also contains his fullest account of political authority. Most immediately relevant are its insights into Grotius’ concept of what we might call citizenship in Christianity, because they buttress his argument for mass participation in politics. In fact, Grotius’ apparent modernity in this regard may have more to do with his Christianity than any supposed secularism. In particular, when we examine Grotius’ Christianity, we again see an implicit distinction between kathekon and katorthoma. Grotius’ list of dogmatic essentials involves clear and immutable duties, such as those of kathekon. These essentials of Christianity – much like those of strict justice – are few in number.33 Moreover, they are apparent to all Christians – including the early Christians who typically lacked access to higher learning. It is true that Grotius cites early Christian luminaries such as Lactantius and Augustine as frequently as he does their secular Roman counterparts like Cicero and Seneca. But Grotius’ Renaissance outlook seeks to recover not simply the learning of Christian Rome but even moreso its virtue. Hence, when Grotius turns his attention to the essence of Christianity, he emphasizes moral over intellectual virtues. The fullness of the faith is not reserved for theologians who refine the precision of doctrine. On the contrary, it is available to the unlearned, if they will only instantiate the Christian moral virtues in their being. Praying may be more helpful than reading. 34 Hence, the specific duties of Christianity are not complex. Rather, the challenge seems to arise in carrying these out full-heartedly rather than ritualistically – whether one is sophisticated or simple. This explains why many Christian saints are people of humble station and meagre learning. They are not sanctified by their adherence to doctrine – a test that would only mark them as ordinary Christians. Indeed, experts in theology are surprisingly scarce in the Christian pantheon, and less than five per cent of second-millennium Popes have even made the cut. If sainthood is not defined by knowledge of Christian doctrine, what then are its criteria? To ask the question is perhaps to miss the point. Like classical virtue, sainthood is ultimately beyond definition. Like the spoudaios, one recognizes the saint by being in her presence. Once again, Grotius’ Christianity reinforces his commitment to katorthoma – one that Socrates would surely endorse. Hence, if one wants to find the “soul of the church”, one should look to times and places where the entirety of the church – from theologians to peasants – was in concord and unity. One such example cited by Grotius is that of the early church, admired throughout Christian history. 35 Conversely, in his apologetic work De Veritate Religionis Christianae (On

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the Truth of the Christian Religion), he argues that the early church’s eventual descent into doctrinal factionalism was the precondition for the rise of Islam. He especially indicts clerical speculation: “as of old, preferring the tree of knowledge to the tree of life,…nice inquiries were esteemed more than piety, and religion was made an art.”36 In other words, religious speculation is not simply an alternative to harmonious piety, one that redirects energy away from worship toward mental gymnastics. It may actually be an enemy of godliness, leading to controversy, internal strife, and even schism.37 Hence, the Christian spirit is best served by refraining to define matters other than “those doctrines necessary or very profitable for salvation.” For example, Grotius points out that the church overcame the Pelagian heresy without taking strict positions on free will and predestination.38 There may be another reason for Grotius’ discomfort with dogma. Christianity ultimately rests not in a dogmatic code, but in the second person of the Trinity, who demonstrates the heights of sacrificial charity. Inasmuch as Christ does issue commands, he says, “be ye perfect”. If one must fully carry out this command, what person could ever meet the standard? No person can match Christ’s condescension to earth and death on behalf of others who had wronged him. If only perfect rule-followers could be Christians, there would be none to be found. Christ’s death, of course, overcomes this universal human incapacity, and Grotius offers one attempt to work out the mechanics in his Atonement theology. In brief, Christ’s substitutionary punishment permits God the governor to relax the law mandating eternal punishment of all sinful humans. Grotius describes God’s pardon using the words of the ancients: it is “not according to the law, yet not against it; but rather, above the law, and instead of it.” 39 He might well have described virtue – whether political or Christian – in the same words.

Politics and the Need for (Reasonable) Religion Hence, Grotius’ approach to the virtue of the few and the rules of the many is no less present in his theology than in his political philosophy. However, this commonality does not simply mean that religion and politics are on parallel tracks. Rather, in Grotius’ account, they each interweave in ways that strengthen the other. Religious moral precepts and sanctions directly benefit the state. What is more, even its doctrines and ceremonies bring indirect benefit, as they focus their participants’ minds on God and thus turn their souls toward the good. Grotius buttresses this argument by citing Plato’s Republic, which further shows that his virtue is

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existential and not merely intellectual. Hence, while the “prime and principal [human] end” of religion is intrinsically worthwhile, it also provides extrinsic benefits to politics. In particular, Christian citizens are “quiet, obedient, patriotic, and adherents of justice and equity.”40 However, there is a further and deeper reason why Christianity benefits politics. As we know, Grotius believes that the many are capable of believing in the dogma of the state constitution. The same is true of them regarding the sacred analogue of religious doctrine. When they adhere to such kathekon, whether political or religious, they participate in a higher goodness. However, many do not fully understand the higher reality of which those rules are only a second-order derivation. They do not understand the intention behind the rules, and thus likely lack intrinsic motivation to follow them. For this reason, they must be given extrinsic motives to act according to the rational guidance of kathekon. Politics offers one set of extrinsic motives: the rewards and punishments of the state. Christianity offers another set of extrinsic motives: the divine rewards and punishments of eternity. However, politics – unlike religion – encounters a problem: no state can ever perfectly enforce conformity to the law. Those that try are sometimes called “totalitarian”. Without the threat of divine punishment, can people truly be counted on even to keep their secular promises? This is the question posed by Glaucon in the Ring of Gyges fable. Socrates clinches his argument in the final book of the Republic by appealing to the immortality of the soul. Alexis de Tocqueville later answers this question in similar fashion: without religion, men would be overcome by the “innumerable temptations of fortune”, becoming “daring innovators” and “implacable disputants” who advance “the maxim that everything is permissible”.41 For this reason, conformity even to kathekon may require an all-seeing divine judge who is guaranteed to catch lawbreakers, including those who elude the arm of the state. Of course, this divine judge is also an executive whose eternal rewards and punishments exceed those of the state by a goodly margin. For this reason, Grotius later adds at least two additional elements to the aforementioned five principles of strict justice. First, one must believe in a sovereign and good God who takes interest in the affairs of the world. Second, one must also believe that this God gives just rewards and punishments to immortal souls in the afterlife. 42 Thus, according to Grotius, political justice cannot support itself without basic elements of theology. A mass politics requires religion. But in Grotius’ eyes, politics does not require adherence to Christian religion. Grotius’ religious mythos is not a particularistic one appropriate

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only to those who accept Christian revelation – or any other particular revelation. Rather, these two religious principles of strict justice are elements of natural religion. Any religion truly worthy of the name must include them. In other words, even in the absence of special divine revelation, reason dictates the necessity of religion and outlines its minimum content. The religious myth required for politics is in fact a rational myth. As a Christian, Grotius is particularly alert to this idea of rational myth, because his God is the Word (logos). Catholic Christianity has historically understood itself as permitting an understanding of religion through reason. For instance, Aquinas presents his five proofs of God’s existence on the basis of reason rather than divine revelation.43 What is more, natural religion is knowable to all through unassisted reason. As a result, it can be legitimately demanded of all, which is to say that it can be coerced by the state. Grotius then explores the implications for foreign military coercion. He emphatically denounces the injustice of wars for conversion to a particular religion, because no one can be coerced into believing a particular revelation that they have not seen. But Grotius is not a cultural relativist; people can still be held accountable to that which reason makes plain. Hence, he licenses wars undertaken to punish other nations for impiety toward God, known to reason as the eternal judge. What is more, Grotius does not simply condone punishment for sacrilege toward the Christian God. He also mandates punishment for the treason of other peoples toward the gods of their own religion, which by definition would have to include a righteous eternal judge.44 Hence, Grotius offers a robust yet non-particularistic defense of natural public piety. Without it, even the most purely modern, secular, and procedural elements of justice cannot stand. Although the state comes about through the procedural method of consent, its members cannot be counted on to keep their promises without something beyond politics. In other words, the person cannot hope to attain their rational and political telos without something beyond secular reason and politics. As Long states, “‘living in agreement with nature’ is the standard Stoic definition of the ethical end.”45 But for all of Grotius’ clear Stoic inspiration, we can now see why he says that “it is not enough simply to live in accordance with nature.” Nature demands religion.46 Hence, if Grotius is a modern liberal, he is not one who relegates religion to the private sphere. Virtues of religion are crucial to the maintenance of a liberal political order.47

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Religion and the Need for Political Oversight Yet if Grotius advances the provocative thesis that politics depends on religion, he also advances an equally controversial belief that religious virtue requires politics. This is, in fact, the primary purpose of De Imperio. Grotius penned it in response to the Dutch religio-political controversy that would ultimately result in his own imprisonment. The orthodox Calvinist party had asked the state to convene a synod to define the “five points of Calvinism”. Grotius asked the state not to convene one. But both sides took for granted the Erastian role of the state in governing the church. (In a historical paradox, early seventeenth-century Holland was known as a beacon of religious tolerance in which many dissenters – such as Descartes – found refuge.) In this work, Grotius asserts that a ruler cannot “neglect knowledge of church government” for the specific reason that “nothing is more excellent than this or more important to the integrity of the state.”48 Why is he so comfortable entrusting church government to a lay supreme power? One might be tempted to argue that religious myth simply serves the state: the political ruler cynically manipulates religion for state purposes. But for Grotius, religious myth primarily serves religious practice, and only secondarily political promises. His citations come from Plato and Aristotle, not Averroes and Marsilius. Rather, Grotius may be Erastian because of his emphasis on practice over doctrine. Christian doctrines are so few in number and so evident in content that the Christian governor can hardly fail to comprehend and defend them.49 Indeed, this lay governor’s very lack of further theological learning will prevent him – in contrast to the theologians – from becoming attached to speculative doctrines on non-essential matters. This prepares the governor for his central function: to foster unity and prevent schism. The governor’s task is more practical than propositional. The governor’s political skill (not to mention monopoly on coercive force) makes him well-suited to this task. Grotius approvingly cites Constantine’s invocation of cloture on dogmatic debate, and exhorts the governors of his day to do likewise.50 Grotius thus carefully separates the speculative function of theologians (or philosophers) from the unifying function of governors. The latter is more concerned to combat schism than heresy. Indeed, while Grotius hopes that the ruler will be a Christian, apostasy does not invalidate his rule, even in his function as church governor. As Grotius has said earlier, the ruler needs no detailed knowledge of the minutiae of Christian doctrine. Rather, he needs to know how to promote order. A nonbelieving

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ruler may still be effective in this role, and – like a third-party judge – may be even less inclined to take sides in the dogmatic controversy.51 Indeed, one of the benefits of interweaving politics into religion is that the political ruler may even nudge religion into conversation with citizens of other religions. By doing so, the ruler may help adherents of any particular religion to frame their public arguments in ways that are intelligible to those of other religions. After all, Grotius’ Christian arguments for God’s existence and righteous judgment overlap with the arguments of all genuine religions for the same. This anticipates Tocqueville’s praise of America, in which “each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all the sects preach the same moral law in the name of God.” This moral law is based on the prospect of divine reward and punishment, and beyond that, “the peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance” to the governor.52 What is more, political protection against overly-defined religious dogma helps to preserve space for those few who are capable of attaining katorthoma, or intrinsic virtue. On the most basic level, this protection preserves a liberty to disagree on higher matters, and thus an ability to speak out without fearing for one’s life. These basic minimums protect the virtuous few from Socrates’ fate at the hands of democracy. On a deeper level, however, religious liberty protects against the impression that Christianity (or philosophic wisdom) is reducible to rule-following. This enables the realization among those who have attained kathekon that a higher standard is still available. It also protects against the misperception that virtue can be finite. Beyond the basic rules of strict justice, the demands of virtue can never be perfectly fulfilled, and thus the state cannot (pace Aristotle) give rewards upon such completion. This retreat preserves greater space for the intrinsic motives of katorthoma. After all, if the state were to incentivize higher virtue, could we be certain that its honourees had acted for intrinsic reasons? Is there not some tension at the heart of Aristotle’s distributive justice?53 Hence, a liberal state that does not formally promote virtue might actually better preserve the preconditions for genuine virtue. Perhaps the modern liberal state is incapable of publicly taking seriously the highest aims of human existence. But perhaps all states are so limited – and perhaps the goodness of the modern state is that it does not try. Liberalism may be at its best when it pulls back from comprehensive doctrines precisely to allow them to re-emerge from a parallel source. Its limitation may be its strength. To say that the modern liberal state typically adopts this approach self-consciously and with full intention might be to ascribe to it a katorthoma that it does not deserve. But even if it does this

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unconsciously, it at least partakes in the penumbra of goodness known as kathekon. That might be reason enough for its classical European grandparent not to disown it.

Classical Grotius and Modern Europe Hugo Grotius is increasingly credited as the herald of modern Europe. His historical and personal situation places him at a sort of crossroads: a Christian with a Renaissance education, an intellectual with political instincts, a proud Dutch citizen with a European reputation, an advocate for peace and justice during a time of war. He was recognized by his contemporaries as having established the field of law among nations, providing a framework for the emerging modern nation-state order that is today one of Europe’s gifts to the world. Grotius’ philosophic role in shaping modern Europe is perhaps even more crucial. In this regard, most observers see him as ushering in a rights-based order that liberates Europe from its teleological past. This permits a political pluralism and confines religion and philosophy to the private sphere. He also supposedly organizes and codifies morality around a set of tangible principles easily enshrined in state constitutions. These principles mandate a liberal non-interference rather than demanding positive action. Finally, in codifying justice, he makes possible an egalitarian politics of universal participation. In this reading, Grotius might be seen as a precursor to the rights-based pan-Europeanism of the European Union. If Hobbes claims to be the founder of a new modern political science, perhaps he is a usurper of Grotius’ rightful title. Yet if my argument is correct, Grotius is a great European for quite the opposite philosophical reasons. If Grotius prepares the way for a distinctively modern European nation-state, he does so (unlike Hobbes) by building on the classical inheritance of Europe. His apparent support for the modern liberal nation-state is in fact meant to safeguard virtue in a mass age. First, if his religious claims and understandings of virtue are mostly uncoercible by the state, this does not mean that they lack political import. Rather, his subjective rights are meant to protect the philosopher or religious believer, whose belief in a trans-political reality might otherwise threaten an illiberal sovereign. Indeed, religious virtue is central to maintaining a secular order based on consent, because only the rewards and punishments of God can truly guarantee promises. Second, if Grotius proposes a set of clear, distinct, and limited principles of political justice, it is not because those principles exhaust morality. Rather, it is because they safeguard those who – like Socrates – recognize a virtue “not

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according to the law, but not against it.” These propositional formulations govern only the lower realms of human existence precisely to point to higher realms that transcend such governance. In addition, Grotius is able to impose a set of binding negative proscriptions on the masses that will ensure their continence (if not exactly their virtue). This is fitting for a mass age in which deference to authority is minimal and governments must find a way to persuade a mass society of the truth of their pronouncements. Third and finally, if Grotius invites all to participate in citizenship, it is not because of a proto-Rousseauian belief in the inherent goodness of all people. Rather, his deviation from classical Greek and Roman pessimism about the masses is more likely due to a classical Christian conviction that even the best are limited by sin and even the masses can be touched by grace. And his Christian belief in God as logos allows him to outline his foundational religious principles in a nonparticularistic epistemology that makes them comprehensible to all. The Middle Eastern influence in the European lineage – that of Christianity – may actually bring out the best in Europe. The assistance of the classical Grotius in the delivery room of modern Europe suggests that Europe’s bloodlines are not new but old, and that its history is not simply a legacy but a living reality. Like a rebellious youngster, Europe may resemble her grandmother more than she realizes – and perhaps more than she wishes. But when crises arrive – and several seem to be on the horizon – she may be grateful to have somewhere to turn.

Bibliography Barducci, Marco. “The Anglo-Dutch Context for the Writing and Reception of Hugo Grotius’s De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra, 1617-1659.” Grotiana 34 (2013): 120-37. Blom, Hans W. and Laurens C. Winkel, eds. Grotius and the Stoa. Assen, NL: Royal Van Gorcum, 2004. Brooke, Christopher. “Grotius, Stoicism and ‘Oikeiosis’.” Grotiana 29 (2008): 25-50. Bouldin, Wood. “Review: Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion and Grotius and the Stoa.” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 690-92. Cicero. De Finibus. In The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, With Philosophical Commentary, edited by A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

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Constant, Benjamin. “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared With That of the Moderns.” In Political Writings, translated by Biancamaria Fontana, 308-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Cox, Richard. “Hugo Grotius.” In History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. In The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, With Philosophical Commentary, edited by A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Feenstra, Robert, ed. The World of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). Amsterdam: APA – Holland University Press, 1984. Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Gass, Michael. “Eudaimonism and Theology in Stoic Accounts of Virtue.” Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2000): 22-24. Geddert, Jeremy Seth. “Beyond Strict Justice: Hugo Grotius on Punishment and Natural Right(s).” Review of Politics 76 (2014): 55988. —. Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom: Transcending Natural Rights. London: Routledge, 2017. —. “Hugo Grotius’ Modern Translation of Aristotle.” In Concepts of Nature: Ancient and Modern, edited by Steven F. McGuire and R. J. Snell. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2016. Gunnoe, Charles. “The Evolution of Erastianism: Hugo Grotius’s Engagement with Thomas Erastus.” Grotiana 34 (2013): 25-40. Haakonssen, Knud. “Hugo Grotius and the History of Political Thought.” Political Theory 13 (1985): 239-65. Heering, J. P. Hugo Grotius as Apologist for the Christian Religion: A Study of His Work De veritate religionis christianae (1640), translated by J. C. Grayson. Boston: Brill, 2004. —. “Hugo Grotius' De Veritate Religionis Christianae.” In Hugo Grotius: Theologian, edited by Henk J. M. Nellen and Edwin Rabbie. New York: Brill, 1993. Johnson, James Turner. “Grotius’ Use of History and Charity in the Modern Transformation of the Just War Idea.” In Grotius, Vol. 2, edited by John Dunn and Ian Harris. Lyme, NH: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 1997. Hugo Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (On the Power of Sovereigns Concerning Religious Affairs). Critical edition

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with introduction, translation and commentary Harm-Jan Van Dam. Boston: Brill, 2001. —. Defensio Fidei Catholicae de Satisfactione Christi (The Satisfaction of Christ). Edited and introduced by Edwin Rabbie, translated by Hotze Mulder. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990. —. Inleydinge (Jurisprudence of Holland). Edited by R. W. Lee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926. —. Meletius. Translated by Guillaume H. M. Posthumus Meyjes. New York: Brill, 1988. —. The Rights of War and Peace. Edited by Richard Tuck, from the edition by Jean Barbeyrac. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005. —. The Truth of the Christian Religion. Edited and introduced by Maria Rosa Antognazza, translated by John Clarke. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012. Haggenmacher, Peter. “Droits subjectifs et systeme juridique chez Grotius.” In Politique, Loi, et Theologie Chez Bodin, Grotius et Hobbes, edited by Luc Foisneau. Paris: Kimé, 1997. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by C. B. MacPherson. New York, Penguin, 1968. Lagrée, Jacqueline. “Grotius: Natural Law and Natural Religion.” In Religion, reason, and nature in early modern Europe, edited by Robert Crocker. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Laplanche, François. “Grotius et les Religions du Paganisme dans les Annotationes in Vetus Testamentum.” In Hugo Grotius – Theologian, edited by Henk J. M. Nellen and Edwin Rabbie. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Maas, Willem. “Grotius on Citizenship and Political Community,” Grotiana 20-21 (1999-2000): 163-78. Manent, Pierre. A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State. Translated by Marc LePain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Miller, Jon. “Grotius and Stoebaeus.” Grotiana 26-28 (2005-07): 104-26. National Committee for the Commemoration of Grotius’ Birth. Hugo Grotius: A Great European, 1583-1645. Translated by P. J. E. Hyams. Delft: Meinema, 1983. Nellen, Henk J. M. and Edwin Rabbie. Hugo Grotius – Theologian. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Nellen, Henk. Hugo Grotius: A Lifelong Struggle for Peace in Church and State, 1583-1645. Leiden: Brill, 2014. O’Donovan, Oliver. “Review: De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra,” in Theological Studies 64 (2003): 629-30.

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Pangle, Thomas L. and Peter J. Ahrensdorf. Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999. Rabbie, Edwin. “Hugo Grotius and Judaism.” In Hugo Grotius – Theologian, edited by Henk J. M. Nellen and Edwin Rabbie. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Rapp, Hans. “Grotius and Hume on Natural Religion and Natural Law.” In Grotius, Vol. 2, edited by John Dunn and Ian Harris. Lyme, NH: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 1997. Schneewind, Jerome. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sherwood, Yvonne. “Beyond the Conflict Between ‘Reason’ and ‘Revelation’” Grotiana 35 (2014), 95-118. Stobaeus. Anthology. In The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, With Philosophical Commentary, edited by A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Straumann, Benjamin. “‘Ancient Caesarian Lawyers’ in a State of Nature: Roman Tradition and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ ‘De Iure Praedae’.” Political Theory 34 (2006): 328-50. —. “Natural Rights and Roman Law in Hugo Grotius’s Theses LVI, De iure praedae and Defensio capitis quinti maris liberi.” Grotiana 26-28 (2005-2007): 341-65. —. “Oikeiosis and appetitus societatis: Hugo Grotius’ Ciceronian argument for natural law and just war.” Grotiana 24-25 (2003-2004): 41-66. —. Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law. Translated by Belinda Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Strauss, Leo. Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace, edited and introduced by Steven Forde. Course, Autumn 1964, University of Chicago. Stumpf, Christoph. The Grotian Theology of International Law. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Thomas, Jeremy. “The Intertwining of Law and Theology in the Writings of Grotius.” Journal of the History of International Law 1 (1999): 61100. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

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Tuck, Richard. “Grotius and Selden,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought (1450-1700), edited by J. H. Burns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. —. Natural Rights Theories: Their origin and development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. —. Philosophy and Government 1572-1651. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Van Dam, Harm-Jan. “De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra.” In Hugo Grotius: Theologian. Edited by Henk J. M. Nellen and Edwin Rabbie. New York: Brill, 1993. —. “Introduction.” In Hugo Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (On the Power of Sovereigns Concerning Religious Affairs). Critical edition with introduction, translation and commentary by Harm-Jan Van Dam. Boston: Brill, 2001. Vermeulen, B. P. and G. A. Van Der Wal. “Grotius, Aquinas and Hobbes: Grotian natural law between lex aeterna and natural rights.” Grotiana 16 (1995): 55-83. Villey, Michel. La Formation de la Pensee Juridique Moderne. Paris: Montchretien, 1975. Waszek, Norbert. “Two Concepts of Morality: A distinction of Adam Smith’s Ethics and its Stoic Origin.” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 591-606.

Notes 1

Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared With That of the Moderns,” in Political Writings, trans. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 308-28. 2 They were also critics of democracy: Plato argued for the rule of the philosopherkings, and Aristotle accepted mixed rule only if no appropriate monarch could be found. 3 On the subject of political forms, see Pierre Manent, A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, trans. Marc LePain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 44-47. 4 The National Committee for the Commemoration of Grotius’ Birth, eds., Hugo Grotius: A Great European, 1583-1645, trans. P. J. E. Hyams (Delft: Meinema, 1983). 5 Richard Tuck, “Grotius and Selden,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700, ed. J. H. Burns (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 506-07, 515-19. For a variation on this specific line of thought, see Michel Villey, La Formation de la Pensee Juridique Moderne (Paris: Montchretien, 1975); Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Peter Haggenmacher, “Droits subjectifs et systeme juridique chez Grotius”, in Luc Foisneau, ed. Politique, Loi, et Theologie Chez Bodin, Grotius et Hobbes (Paris: Kimé, 1997); and Jerome Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 6 See Jeremy Seth Geddert, Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom: Transcending Natural Rights (London: Routledge, 2017), 3-7, 154-56, 200-03, 216-20. 7 Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard Tuck, from the edition by Jean Barbeyrac (hereafter DJB) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 3.11.2-8, 1425-31. 8 Ibid., 1.1.8, 141-45. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 1.1.3, 136. 11 Ibid., Prolegomena.8, 85-86. 12 Ibid., 1.1.8.2, 146-47. 13 See note 5. 14 Grotius, DJB 1.1.8.1, 141-45. 15 Ibid., 1.1.9, 147-50. 16 Benjamin Straumann, Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law, trans. Belinda Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 98; see more generally 96-104. 17 Cicero, De Finibus, 3.17, 20-22, in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources, With Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 36061; Straumann, 110. 18 Stobaeus, 2.85.13-86.4, in Long and Sedley, 360; Diogenes Laertius 7.107, in Long and Sedley, 360. 19 Long and Sedley, 365. 20 Ibid. 21 Michael Gass, “Eudaimonism and Theology in Stoic Accounts of Virtue” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), 22-24. 22 Long and Sedley, 366. 23 Ibid., 363. 24 Stobaeus 2.96.18, in Long and Sedley, 363. 25 Cicero, De Finibus, 3.17, 20-22, in Long and Sedley, 361. 26 Long and Sedley, 361. 27 Grotius, DJB Prol.5-10, 79-88; 1.1.10.1-5, 150-56. This echoes his philosophical anthropology in Inleydinge (Jurisprudence of Holland), ed. R. W. Lee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), 1.2.6, 5-7. 28 Straumann provides a detailed and rich portrait of Grotius’ Stoic sources, as well as an insightful treatment of the Stoic distinction between kathekon and katorthoma. In exploring kathekon, he shows the deontological grounding of

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Grotius’ strict justice. However, in exploring katorthoma, he effectively reads Grotius as reducing it to kathekon. Accordingly, he sees Grotius as redefining honestum (katorthoma) as the mere nonviolation of the rights of others. For this reason, he deepens the standard reading of Grotius as “abandoning an ethics of virtue for an ethics of rules”, without exploring how Grotius’ wider justice (itself informed by his Christianity) might deepen Grotius’ embrace of Stoic katorthoma. See Straumann, 113-19. 29 Grotius, DJB 2.23.13.1-3, 1130-31; 3.11.2-8, 1425-31. In the latter, Grotius interrupts his own analysis to translate the entirety of Book 5, Chapter 8 of Aristotle’s Ethics. 30 See Grotius, DJB 3.10-16. Straumann 113-17 seems to argue that all wars (presuming they are undertaken in self-interest) are kathekon, and just wars are katorthoma. By contrast, the present argument presumes that only wars with just causes are kathekon and that unjust wars of self-interest do not qualify, and that the just waging of war (or the prudent giving up of one’s right to wage war) is katorthoma. Grotius’ strict justice (kathekon) permits self-preservation, but only inasmuch as it is consistent with the self-preservation of others; it is not Hobbes’ “right to every thing, even to one another’s body” (See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. MacPherson (New York, Penguin, 1968), 190). 31 Long and Sedley, 427; Straumann, 109. However, Cicero seems to be a dissenter to this Stoic consensus, suggesting that both the wise and the foolish can have kathekon. See Cicero, De Finibus 3.58-59, in Long and Sedley, 362. 32 Grotius, DJB, 2.20.43.1, 1026-27. 33 Hugo Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (On the Power of Sovereigns Concerning Religious Affairs) (hereafter De Imperio), critical edition with introduction, translation and commentary by Harm-Jan Van Dam (Boston: Brill, 2001), 5.9, 275; 6.9, 308-13. 34 Ibid., 5.9, 268-75. 35 Ibid., 6.9, 308-13. 36 Hugo Grotius, The Truth of the Christian Religion (hereafter De Veritate), ed. and intro. Maria Rosa Antognazza, trans. John Clarke (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012), 6.1, 231-33. 37 Grotius, De Imperio, 5.9, 268-75. 38 Ibid., 6.9, 308-13. Compare this with Hobbes' insistence in Leviathan that one can say nothing without the prior foundation of definitions: they are “but insignificant sounds.” See Hobbes, Leviathan, 108. 39 Hugo Grotius, Defensio Fidei Catholicae de Satisfactione Christi (The Satisfaction of Christ), ed. and intro. Edwin Rabbie, trans. Hotze Mulder (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990), 5.12, 180-81. See also Hugo Grotius, Meletius, trans. Guillaume H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (New York: Brill, 1988), 50, 119. 40 Grotius, De Imperio 1.13, 175-79; 6.6, 299. Grotius later repeats these themes in DJB 2.20.44.3, 1028. For a more detailed treatment of this topic, see Geddert, Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom, 88-93, 106. 41 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 1.2.9, 291-93.

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42 Grotius, DJB 2.20.46.1, 1035. Grotius here abridges his list in DJB 2.20.45.1, 1032-33, where he had listed four principles of natural religion. This abridgement also echoes the two principles he outlines in Meletius 6-8, 105-06. In De Veritate 3.12, 48-49, he outlines several additional principles. 43 Grotius considers himself to be catholic, as shown by the title of his Atonement treatise: “A Defence of the Catholic Faith”. 44 Grotius, DJB 2.20.40-43, 1021-27; 2.20.50-51, 1050-52. 45 Long and Sedley, 365. 46 Grotius, Meletius 86, 132. 47 One might point out that this discussion deals only with the masses, whether political or religious. Is the saint of katorthoma not exempt from the need for eternal judgment to motivate virtue? Does he not already do for intrinsic motives what the weak do for extrinsic motives? Without claiming a full answer for this question, one might at minimum point to the Book of Job – the religious reciprocal to the Ring of Gyges. Here Job is held up as a saint precisely because he is virtuous even when punishment is guaranteed. 48 Grotius, De Imperio 6.6, 298-99. 49 Ibid., 5.9, 268-75. Grotius does admit the possibility that the governor may rule badly on these matters. However, all men are fallible; passing this role on to someone more expert is no guarantee of good government. 50 Ibid., 5.9, 268-75; 6.9, 308-13; 8.6, 380-83. 51 Grotius adds that Divine Providence is able to work through bad rulers as well as good ones. After citing Augustine, he says, “sometimes calm weather is more useful to the church, sometimes a storm.” (Ibid., 8.2, 375-77.) 52 Tocqueville, 1.2.9, 290-91. 53 See also Geddert, Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom, 210-13.

CHAPTER NINE THOMAS HOBBES ON SOVEREIGN AUTHORIZATION AND THE PROBLEM OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM LEE WARD

Liberalism and nationalism are two of the great formative moments of modernity. While there is, of course, a deep interconnection between these two phenomena historically, it is also widely recognized that national myths about political founding and identity are in tension with liberal values of rational justification and publicity.1 As Abizadeh observes: “The defense of nationalist myths-as-lies and myths-as-establishment is incompatible with standard liberal democratic accounts of how power must be legitimated” (Abizadeh 2004: 310). One aspect of the complex relation between liberalism and nationalism that according to some commentators undermines much of contemporary democratic theory is the “legitimate borders” problem. The essence of this problem lies in the proposition that insofar as democratic theory, following the social contract tradition, presupposes that there must be pre-political grounds for constituting legitimate boundaries among peoples, it fails to do so because any theoretical account resting upon pre-political grounds for legitimizing borders is, once again in Abizadeh’s view, “incapable of specifying a procedure by which the boundaries of the demos can be democratically legitimized” with respect to both insiders and outsiders, who are both in some sense subject to political boundaries (Abizadeh 2012: 874). It is thus believed that the tension between liberal universalism of the boundless demos, on the one hand, and the radical contingency and particularity of the nation-state, on the other, constantly threatens to tear the political horizons of modernity apart. In this paper I suggest that Thomas Hobbes’ theory of sovereign authorization can illuminate important aspects of both the relation of liberalism and nationalism, and the “legitimate border” issue that troubles

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critics of democratic theory such as Abizadeh. Admittedly Hobbes may seem to be an odd choice for the task at hand. He is rarely seen as a theorist with much to say about nationalism inasmuch as he is normally associated with the purest form of liberal individualism shorn of any affective attachments or other-regarding moral commitments. Similarly, as a champion of absolute monarchy and scourge of constitutionalism, Hobbes is also typically not identified with democratic theory or its purported border problem. However, I will argue that while Hobbes obviously did not speak about the version of nationalism familiar historically from the 19th and 20th centuries, his treatment of sovereign authorization, according to which every individual subject authorizes the sovereign to represent and act on his or her behalf, supplies an alternative to the standard nationalist “myths-as-establishment.” The concept of representation is the pivotal link between liberalism and nationalism, and Hobbes practically invented the modern idea of representation in his theory of sovereign authorization. The central feature of Hobbes’ idea of political founding is the doctrine of the legal personality of the state, which stipulates that authorization is both a constitutive act through which the sovereign is produced, and simultaneously the moral referent by which individuals understand their political obligation. I will argue that Hobbes’ account of political founding supplies an alternative, or corrective, to nationalist myths that requires recurring reexamination and reaffirmation of the legitimacy of the state. Hobbes’ theory of sovereign authorization also speaks to the legitimate border problem. While Hobbes was not even a proto-democrat, he was a seminal thinker about “institutive or framed government,” that is Hobbes and democratic theorists share a fundamental assumption about the artificial or constructed character of government.2 Hobbes’ connection to democratic theory derives from his status as one of the founders of the social contract tradition, which as we have noted, is seen by some as an “utter failure” in the effort to legitimize borders democratically to nonmembers of the community.3 Hobbes addresses the membership question indirectly in his description of the process by which a “multitude” becomes a “people,” that is how a random assortment of natural individuals can become a political collective. Sovereign authorization is not territorially limited. Thus, it can in principle describe a legal union deduced from cultural, ethnic, religious and even imperial considerations. We shall see that Hobbes’ account of sovereign authorization lays out a process by which outsiders can become insiders, but one that justifies borders in a manner not dependent on pre-political grounds of legitimacy or the consent of outsiders.

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This paper is comprised of three sections. The first section examines the historical context and intellectual development of Hobbes’ argument for sovereign authorization in Leviathan by comparing and contrasting it with earlier and contemporaneous versions of social contract such as that of the Jesuit scholastics Roberto Bellarmine and Francisco Suarez, English parliamentary thinkers of the English civil war era such as Henry Parker and Philip Hunton, and the Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius. In this section we will also trace the development of the distinctively Hobbesian idea of sovereignty and legal personality in his 1651 masterpiece Leviathan from the material present in his earlier works Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642). Section two will focus on Hobbes’ crucial argument for sovereign authorization in chapters 16-18 of Leviathan. In particular, we will examine Hobbes’ concept of representation, which is an extraordinarily flexible concept that makes modern “indirect” government possible (Mansfield 1971: 97-8). With this discussion Hobbes arguably imparts a degree of psychological depth to the analysis of sovereignty that exceeds both works by his contemporaries and his own earlier works. In the concluding section we will revisit the “legitimate border” problem in light of Hobbes’ crucial discovery of the modern idea of representation. In his account of sovereign authorization we see the mechanism through which a people come into being as a distinct legal entity. In contrast to the notion of a “boundless demos,” Hobbes’ teaching to modern democrats suggests that there is no moral obligation to renegotiate borders without the consent of outsiders apart from the general natural law injunction to seek peace.

Section I: From Polis to Person In order to understand what is unique and important about Hobbes’ theory of sovereign authorization we need to do two things. First, we need briefly to compare and contrast Hobbes’ version of contract theory with the dominant strains among his predecessors and contemporaries. Second, it is vital to trace the development of the idea of authorization and representation in Hobbes’ writings. While it is true that sovereign authorization only first appears in Hobbes’ Leviathan (Skinner 2007: 161, Pitkin 1964: 328, Zagorin 2009: 56),4 I contend that not only is the absence of this concept in his earlier works instructive, but also I believe that we can identify the seeds of sovereign authorization in these works as Hobbes’ thinking about both political obligation and constituent power developed and matured. The three most influential accounts of contract theory in Hobbes’ time were associated with the Jesuit scholastics Bellarmine and Suarez, English

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parliamentary polemicists such as Hunton and Parker, and Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius. Each of these versions of contract theory were part of the broader natural liberty school of modern political thought that operated from the premise of natural human freedom and equality. The central questions for each of these early contract theorists were the same: What is the normative source of political obligation? How do we explain the existence of diverse regime types? And what is the extent and limits of sovereign power? The questions were the same, but each version of contract theory answered these questions rather differently. For the Jesuit scholastics Suarez and Bellarmine the logical moral consequence of natural freedom and equality was that civil government must be a product of consent. This meant that the community of individuals acted as a kind of primordial democracy in which power “is given directly by God to the community” (Suarez 1950: 3.2.9.14, Ward 2004:42). It is important to recall, however, that this original democracy did not mean that these Catholic natural lawyers believed that democracy is either necessary or even advisable as a form of government. In fact they anticipated that a community would typically consent to monarchical government. It is also good to recognize that the original democracy did not mean that the scholastics saw political power as purely a product of human artifice. Rather they were Christian-Aristotelians who believed that the final cause of political power—namely, God—is the most fundamental political truth. Indeed, for the Jesuit scholastics the political community remained a “mystical body,” despite being a product of consent (Suarez 1944: 375). Where this argument for divine superintendence of the political community differed most conspicuously from divine right monarchy was in relation to resistance. Whereas divine right monarchists such as Robert Filmer insisted that divine ordination of government meant that the subjects are never justified to resist authority, Suarez and Bellarmine argued that a community is morally justified to rebel against a tyrant who has seized power without consent or when a ruler with just title misuses power by injuring the common good (Bellarmine 1928: 83, Suarez 1944: 705-08, Ward 2004: 41). There are certainly radical features of the scholastic contract theory, however, in key respects it is still deeply rooted in a pre-modern theological dispensation. Suarez and Bellarmine viewed consent in mechanistic as opposed to primarily normative terms as the means by which a natural multitude form a “perfect community.” Thus, it was the Aristotelian premise of natural sociability combined with Christian theology that determined the scholastic political theology. In historical context, Hobbes’ most direct intellectual opponents were the English parliamentary writers of the civil war period who tried to

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justify parliament’s claims about sovereignty in the English constitutional order and made arguments for armed resistance to the Crown.5 The most influential of these parliamentary writers were Philip Hunton, author of A Treatise of Monarchie (1643) and Henry Parker, who wrote Observations upon some of his Majesty’s late Answers and Expresses (1642). Similarly to the Jesuit scholastics, Hunton and Parker shared fundamental Aristotelian assumptions about natural sociability, which they saw as consistent with a view of political society as a form of contract produced by the consent of the people. They also echoed the scholastics in affirming a right of popular resistance to monarchical authority justified by the people’s natural constitutive power to order political society and establish legal limits on the Crown (Ward 2004: 48). While the main political ambition of the English parliamentary thinkers was to advance the claim for supremacy of the Commons over the Crown, their theological orientation was no less pronounced than with the Catholic natural lawyers. The most strident and sophisticated defenders of the parliament in the polemical wars of the time were practically all Calvinist dissenters from the established Church of England, for whom the primordial political fact was not individuals, but rather churches and sects. From the teachings of John Calvin and his followers, English parliamentarians were able to draw upon a rich tradition of theological and moral justification for resistance to tyranny, defined as a monarch who transgresses legal limits established by the Commons, that served them well in the tumultuous civil war period (Ward 2004: 54). In some respects the influential Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius resembled the Jesuits and English Puritan rebels. Like them he affirmed natural freedom and equality, believed that government is formed by contract, and despite some gestures toward individual rights, Grotius accepted the Aristotelian premise of natural sociability (Ward 2004: 75-6). But in contrast to the Catholic and Calvinist variants of Christian-Aristotelian contract theory, Grotius rejected completely the idea of divine ordination of political rule. The intrinsic secularism of Grotius’ famous etiamsi daremus proposition clearly parallels the secularism of Hobbes (Grotius 1925: proleg, sec 11). Grotius also reinterpreted and to some extent narrowed the scope for popular resistance in terms of the strict letter of the political contract rather than an extrinsic standard of right or good government determined by either natural law or divine ordinance (Grotius 1925 1.4.21). In contrast to the well-developed teleology of the Christian Aristotelians, Grotius understood contract primarily in terms of the goal of protecting individuals in their communities from harm.

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Prior to Hobbes, we see important strains of contract theory that stressed a combination of human consent and overarching divinely inspired teleology as the source of political obligation. We also recognize a theoretical tendency toward affirming the original democracy with communal consent operating as a mechanism to create aristocracy and monarchy, or in the English case to create a mixed or limited monarchy. In Hobbes’ historical context we typically see contract theory heavily laden with normative assumptions about human sociability and divine justice. These extrinsic principles of good defined, even as they limited, the range of political and constitutional possibilities available to free peoples. The first demonstration of Hobbes’ contractualism appeared in the Elements of Law (1640).6 Arguably at this point in his career Hobbes still operated within categories established by the dominant strains of contract theory. The absence of any well-developed account of the state of nature in the Elements suggests that Hobbes’ early considerations about consent presupposed natural sociability. While there is clearly a preservationist thrust in Hobbes’ claim that people form political unions in order to secure the “mutual aid necessary for defense” (EL 1.19.3.101), we also have to recognize the dual individualistic and collectivist dimension of Hobbes’ early contract theory. On the one hand, it is individuals who form unions when they “relinquisheth” or “transfereth” their natural right to another (EL 1.15.3.75). Individuals make this choice “upon consideration of reciprocal benefit,” in which case the transfer of natural right is a “mutual donation, and is called contract” (EL 1.15.8.77). However, Hobbes also defines this consent in terms of a collective good that points toward natural sociability. Hobbes’ claim that consent involves the “wills of many” concurring on the same action and “to the producing of one effect,” is practically indistinguishable from the Christian-Aristotelians. Consent is, then, fundamentally a collective phenomenon insofar as it occurs solely “when many wills are involved and included in the will of those consenting” (EL 1.12.8.63, also 1.19.6.103). Moreover, this consent produces obligation wherein “every man by covenant obliges himself to some one man or to…some council” (EL 1.19.7.103). The sense that Hobbes is at least partially operating within the realm of traditional ideas is clarified by his insistence that the union he sees being produced by consent is identical to what “the Greeks call it ʌȩȜȚȢ, that is to say, a city,” the consummate organic expression of communal reflection and choice (EL 1.19.8.104). What does Hobbes view as the source of political obligation to the polis in the Elements? The act of contracting seems to indicate a pledge of non-resistance to the sovereign rather than a duty to perform specific

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positive actions. Upon examination, the distinction Hobbes initially drew between relinquishing and transferring of right effectively collapses for as Hobbes later admits it is impossible to really transfer one’s “own strength to another, or for that other to receive it” (EL 1.19.10.104). How then does Hobbes deal with the collective responsibility problem: that is, why is an individual obligated to obey laws made by someone else? Hobbes concluded that it cannot be said that “a number of men hath done any act,” unless we understand “that every particular man in that number hath consented thereunto, and not the greatest part only” (2.1.2.109). By this, Hobbes means that the source of original unity underlying the contract is agreement upon the principle of majority rule insofar as the community allows “the wills of the major part of their whole number, or the wills of the major part of some certain number of men by them determined and named: or lastly, the will of some one man, to involve and be taken for the will of every man” (2.1.3.109). Thus, for Hobbes in his earliest political treatise, the original democracy animating his contract theory was practically identical to what we see with the Jesuit scholastics insofar as Hobbes concurs that “Democracy preceedeth all other institution of government” because being “the first in time…it must be so of necessity…where the votes of a major part involve the votes of the rest, there is actually a democracy” (EL 2.2.1.118). Original democracy signifies that the origin of the state lies in the agreement of individuals prior to government in a primordial, and profoundly democratic, political experience. A few key features of this early version of Hobbesian contractualism are worth observing. First, there is an identifiable hard Hobbesian edge to his account of government. Consent is not sufficient to secure peace “without the erection of some common power,” and rulers who will use the “terror thereof, to frame the will of them all to unity and concord amongst themselves” (EL 1.19.6-7.103-04). There is an unresolved tension between Hobbes’ idea of original democracy and his insistence that coercive power prefigures the initial compact; that is to say, distinctively Hobbesian features of sovereignty emerge from within the contours of more traditional arguments about collective consent. We also, however, recognize a muted teleology in the need for “mutual aid” and “reciprocal benefit,” considerations that can easily be understood as part of a ranking of higher order goods. If there is an implied pre-political natural condition in the Elements, it clearly lacks the ferocity and moral urgency of the state of nature in Leviathan. Indeed, the quasi-Aristotelian original democracy assumes a degree of sociability incompatible with the natural war of all against all.

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In his later De Cive published in Latin in 1642 there is some continuation with the Elements, but also important points of departure. In particular, in De Cive we see the introduction of the notion of a civil person as a legal entity with a single will. The person replaces the polis as the conceptual touchtone of the Hobbesian state. The idea of the civil person emphasizes artificiality as Hobbes’ thoughts on government shed any remaining assumptions about natural sociability. The idea of a person in De Cive also introduces an expanded sense of the creative and transformative power of consent that foreshadows Hobbes’ theory of representation in Leviathan. The first step in Hobbes’ argument is that union is formed by a contract agreed to among individuals in order that there be “but one will of all men,” so that the judgment of one man or council “be received for the will of all men in general and of every one in particular,” and thus “one will of all men, it is to be esteemed for one person” (DC 5.6.169, 5.9.170). By this process, the community “is one person” (DC 5.9.170). Thus, in De Cive Hobbes begins to distinguish this idea of the civil person from the traditional organic polis that persisted in the Elements. Not all civil persons are a city or polis, for example associations of merchants or convents are “civil persons subordinate to the city” (DC 5.10.170-71).7 Legal personality relates primarily to a capacity for voluntary action and collective responsibility. The “multitude is no Natural person” (DC 6.1.174). Legal personality produces the power to punish, but this capacity is itself a product of general agreement in which “I convey my right on a third party, upon condition (DC 6.9.190). Here Hobbes clearly foreshadows the sovereign authorization argument of Leviathan with some differences. In De Cive Hobbes insists that the will of every citizen is “comprehended into the will of the supreme authority of the city” (DC 6.4.182-3). Hobbes’ point with this idea of “comprehension” is not primarily about political obligation, but rather to show that the sovereign is not bound by civil laws. In De Cive Hobbes offers no way to operationalize the comprehension doctrine. This is what authorization achieves in Leviathan. De Cive implies a more asocial natural condition than in the Elements as Hobbes insists that the “multitude” is not an original democracy (DC 7.7.196). Indeed, in De Cive Hobbes even rejects the naturalness of majority rule insisting it is only employed due to “civil institution” (DC 7.11.198). Finally, in De Cive the idea of civil persons introduces an argument for religious uniformity that is not present in the Elements: “But to whole cities, everyone whereof is one person, the same natural reason further commands uniformity of public worship (DC 15.15.302). Subjects Hobbes claims, “transfer their right of judging the manner of God’s worship, on

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him or them who have the sovereign power” (DC 15.17.305). A church only acquires the attributes of legal personality by virtue of its association with civil power and as such, in contradiction to scholastic claims about papal pretensions in politics, Hobbes declares that the “universal church” can never be the basis for a civil person with coercive power (DC 17.201,351-3). In De Cive we see Hobbes moving away from some of the more traditional features of the Elements towards a new idea of consent that proposes a different way to consider the relation between individuals and the institutions they create. The idea of social unification through the forging of a civil personality points towards the concept of representation that Hobbes will develop more fully in Leviathan. In the process, Hobbes will shed the muted teleology and assumptions about sociability in the Elements and articulate a vision of a more abstract process of social construction in which people can attribute voluntary acts and moral responsibility both to their rulers, as well as to themselves.

Section 2: Sovereign Authorization We have seen the development of Hobbes’ account of the origin of political society in the Elements and De Cive, but the most clearly formulated version of this contractualism emerged in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651).8 What distinguished Leviathan from his earlier writings? In a general sense two areas of difference stand out. First, the quintessentially Hobbesian state of nature, only hinted at in De Cive, springs to ferocious life in Leviathan and provides Hobbes’ theoretical foundation for his mature political teaching. The contrast between the brutal war of all against all, on one hand, and government secured civil peace, on the other, reflects the accentuation of Hobbes’ commitment to preserving the distinction, even antithesis, between nature and convention. With this we see Hobbes abandon the last feeble vestiges of natural sociability. Second, Leviathan reflects the maturation of Hobbes’ movement toward a starkly positivistic account of law. In this respect, Leviathan signifies the culmination of Hobbes’ reevaluation of the entire previous natural law tradition. Dictates of reason are not law, Hobbes insists, because law properly speaking pertains to a right of command (Lev 15.41.100). The radical conclusion only alluded to in his earlier works is that there is no law without a representative (either individual or assembly) authorized to make law. The central political question for Hobbes is, then, one of legitimacy: Who has the right to rule?

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The great innovation in Leviathan with respect to this issue of legitimacy is Hobbes’ argument for sovereign authorization. Sovereign authorization is the climax of Hobbes’ earlier thinking in De Cive about the idea of a civil person as a legal entity. The purpose of chapter 16 of Leviathan entitled “Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated” is to define the terms involved in the idea of personhood and to examine what Hobbes takes to be the central political relationship, that being the relation of author and actor. Chapter 16 is also the final chapter in Part I Of Man, and thus is the last chapter before the beginning of Part II Of Commonwealth. Hobbes presents the idea of the person as a kind of bridge between human beings and political society. Together chapter 16 and chapter 17 entitled “Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of the Commonwealth” also complete Hobbes’ treatment of contract and covenant begun in chapter 14. It is widely recognized that defining terms and concepts was one of the main goals in Leviathan because Hobbes believed that agreement on the use of terms would promote peace, even as disagreement about the use of language is a fundamental cause of conflict (Abizadeh 2011, Waldron 2001). A person, Hobbes claims, is “he whose words or actions are considered either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction” (Lev 16.1.101). Perhaps the most striking feature of this definition of a person is its conceptual flexibility that covers words or actions, of one’s own or another’s; that represent people or things and may be attributed in truth or by fictional representation. This definition of a person intensifies the distinction between nature and convention even as it proposes to, at least theoretically, bridge it. The common experience of personhood is in relation to the natural person; that is a human being displaying the features of human physical form and mental life. However, the artificial person is the core of Hobbes’ political teaching, and such a person can only be understood by means of the principle of representation, rather than common sensual experience per se. The relation between real and unreal, or natural and artificial, persons is complicated by the fact that the idea of a “fictional” person is, as Runciman argues, dependent upon real peoples’ acting as though the natural person can or should take responsibility for certain actions attributed to an artificial person (Runciman 2000: 272). Is “fiction” a morally and intellectually compelling premise for explaining political obligation and the origin of the state? Hobbes suggests that this is not an unfair question given that when he looks back at the etymology of the modern English word for person, he finds in its Latin root the association with outward, external appearance and with a strong

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suggestion of disguise and even something counterfeit (Lev 16.3.101). This connotation of deceit or hypocrisy is akin to our idea of impersonation. Hobbes clarifies that this does not necessarily imply anything nefarious, and indeed he emphasizes that personating is an amorphous concept that includes art and religion, as well as politics, to “tribunals as [to] theatres” (Lev 16.3.101). Properly identifying what Hobbes means by a “person” requires recognizing it involves both an internal and external process. Internally it requires assuming an identity that is not naturally one’s own, while externally personating involves the recognition of others. Hobbes demonstrates this complexity with the example of Cicero, who claimed that as a lawyer in a case: “I bear three persons: my own, my adversary’s and the judges” (Lev 16.3.101). Just as Cicero acts in multiple capacities so too is every person “the same that an actor is,” and Hobbes insists this is recognized both “on stage and in common conversation” (Lev 16.3.101). How exactly is one an actor in “common conversation”? Perhaps Hobbes means that if I relate to someone what someone else has said or done, I am in effect representing that person. While Hobbes presents the classical idea of the person as something pertaining to a wide range of phenomena, he noticeably does not, at least early in chapter 16, highlight any uniquely political uses to which the classical idea of person can be employed. The connection of Hobbes’ idea of the person to the theatre or even everyday conversation is perhaps fairly obvious, but what does Hobbes think this idea has to do with politics? The key is the role that the definition of a person plays in developing Hobbes’ mature theory of sovereignty. As we have seen, in De Cive and the Elements contract solely involved natural individuals who form the union; there is no contractual relation with the sovereign. In Leviathan, however, covenant and contract are redefined in terms of ownership rather than simply consent. Or to put it differently, the idea of person advanced in Leviathan means that the author-actor relationship depends upon determining the question of ownership. If the sovereign is now defined as an actor, then the central question is who is the author that owns the title to the right that can be conferred upon the actor, and how does the author go about conferring this right? As Hobbes describes the relation made possible by the extension of the idea of the person into politics, the author confers authority upon an actor and the actors act on behalf of the author. In this relation, Hobbes chooses to stress the moral force of authorized actors rather than the obligations delegated agents have to their principal (Pitkin 1964: 340). For Hobbes, “when the actor maketh a covenant by authority, he bindeth thereby the author, no less than if he had made it himself” (Lev 16.5.102).

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Authority means that an actor can generate moral claims for others. This concept of representation rests, according to Hobbes, upon a foundation of voluntary choice as authors give the actor legitimacy. This for Hobbes is voluntary in two senses both with respect to the will of the authors and the will of the actors. Hobbes clarifies that it is theoretically possible for authors to place limits on the authority conferred upon an actor so that it would reach as far as “their commission, but no farther” (Lev 16.5.102). Hobbes even offers a helpful warning that if you make a covenant with an actor without “knowing the authority he hath, you doth it at [your] own peril” (Lev 16.6.102). Moral responsibility always lies with the author in what Hannah Pitkin dubs Hobbes’ “bound author”/”free actor” scenario (Pitkin 1964: 332). The fictional dimension of representation emerges whenever an owner gives the right of representation to an actor. Hobbes accepts that this gives representation very wide scope as practically anything and everything can be represented in this way. Representation by “fiction” means even inanimate things such as a church building, a hospital or a bridge “may be personated by a rector, master or overseer” (16.9.102). The only limitation in this respect is that inanimate things can only be represented or personated after the establishment of civil government (16.9.102). There are also limits with respect to who can be authors. Inanimate objects, irrational people (children and “madmen”) and illusions cannot be authors (16.10.103). Even these limitations are perhaps not as straightforward as it appears. For example, consider Hobbes’ argument about religion and representation. The “true God” Hobbes claims, may be personated and indeed has been by Moses, Jesus and the “Holy Ghost” (Lev 16.12.103). Pagan gods, however, being “idols cannot be authors” (Lev 16.12.103). The gods of “the heathens” held property and were represented by priests but in this case the “authority proceeded from the state,” not from the illusory deities themselves (Lev 16.11.103). Hobbes does perhaps obscure this point somewhat when he points to the doctrine of the Trinity authorized by the English state as another example of representation both unbound to material reality and not directly flowing from the true God (Lev 16.12.103). We are perhaps now in a better position to see that the answer to the question—what does the idea of a person have to do with Hobbes’ conception of politics?—is that it has everything to do with it. For Hobbes, the commonwealth or state is a person albeit an artificial one. It is precisely the artificiality of the state that is crucial for Hobbes because it signifies his complete rejection of the naturalistic polis elements of which still persisted in his earlier writings. The commonwealth as an artificial

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person with legal existence is a person capable of voluntary action and of generating collective responsibility. The legal personality of the commonwealth is inseparable from its intrinsic unity. The natural multitude of individuals only become one person—a single political entity—when they are represented by one ruler or assembly “so that it be done with the consent of everyone of that multitude in particular” (Lev 16.13.104). The unity that characterizes the unity of the state derives, however, from a very specific condition according to which it is “the unity of the representer, not the unity of the represented, that maketh the person one” (Lev 16.13.103). That is to say, Hobbes insists that there is no natural unity in the undifferentiated multitude for “unity cannot be otherwise understood in multitude” (Lev 16.13.104). Embedded in this conception of unity is an adaptation to representative assemblies in which “the voice of the greater number must be considered the voice of them all” (Lev 16.15.104). The major theoretical innovation in Hobbes’ idea of the state as one person is the proposition that every individual among the multitude is an author “of everything their representative saith or doth in their name, every man giving their common representative authority from himself in particular, and among all the actions the representer doth” (Lev 16.14.104). By what means does the representative sovereign obtain this authorization? It is important to recognize that for Hobbes sovereign authorization is not an event that occurs either before or after a political entity is formed. Rather authorization is identical to the very generation of a commonwealth, which requires everyone acknowledging his or her self as an author. Hobbes famously describes this process in terms of a declaration: “I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner” (Lev 17.13.109). Authorization is more than simply consent or concord. It requires reciprocity: my agreement to authorize the sovereign is contingent upon your agreement to do likewise. In this sense, authorization is also not simply the kind of renunciation of right that we saw in the Elements or De Cive. Hobbes describes the product of this authorization process in quasireligious language as the “great Leviathan,” who is “that Mortal God, to which we owe, under the Immortal God, our peace and defence” (Lev 17.13.109). Orwin argues that despite the moralistic tone of Hobbes’ discussion, this account of the sovereign does not actually suffice to create political obligation for the subject (Orwin 1975: 31). Clearly there is some truth to this as we see in Hobbes’ deliberate move to obscure the distinction between the establishment of the commonwealth by institution (agreement) and by

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acquisition (conquest). We recall Hobbes’ insouciance about the validity of covenants made under threat of force (Lev 14.27.86). Does the sovereign derive a right of governing by virtue of being the representative of a community that has authorized this rule, or does the sovereign have legitimacy to act freely because the sovereign retains full natural right as the only uncontracted agent in the commonwealth? To put it another way, does the sovereign acquire a moral right to rule through the authorization of the subjects or is the sovereign’s right not moral at all, but rather a demonstration of natural liberty, that is the freedom or power to act unimpeded by a greater force? For our purposes the striking thing is that Hobbes does not fully resolve this ambiguity, and in fact seems content to employ both kinds of argument in support of sovereign power. Perhaps the reason that the natural right of the sovereign argument does not make the authorization argument redundant is that they explain different, but related, aspects of the commonwealth. While the former argument may legitimize the actions of the sovereign as sovereign, the latter argument for authorization accounts for the very existence of the sovereign as a political entity distinct from the natural condition. With this in mind we can now better appreciate that in this discussion of sovereign authorization Hobbes is less concerned about creating conditions that produce obligation for the subject than he is about neutralizing arguments for disobeying, and even resisting civil government based upon religious or philosophical claims based upon the right of individual conscience. Hobbes insists that the subject cannot claim a superseding obligation to divine or natural law because “there is no covenant with God but by mediation of somebody that representeth God’s person,” namely, the civil sovereign (Lev 18.3.111). Authorization means that the sovereign cannot be accused of injuring the subjects “because every subject is by this institution author of all the actions and judgment of the sovereign… whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any of his subjects” (Lev 18.6.112). There is, however, some complexity in this aspect of the authorization theory. In his later work De Homine (1658), Hobbes stipulated that “an author must have right to act himself, if not the actor has no authority” (De Homine p. 84). Does the people, that is the author of the commonwealth, have a “right” to act with respect, for example, to punishing a law breaker? The multitude of natural individuals do not have a collective right to punish until they become a civil person or single legal entity by virtue of recognizing and authorizing one sovereign. Hobbes’ point is that when punishing individuals, the sovereign is still acting as a representative of the very people being punished. But does this avoid or reduce the apparent circularity in Hobbes’ claim that the people authorize

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the sovereign once they have become a single people through recognizing a single sovereign? This apparent circularity only really troubles us if we are trying to interpret Hobbes’ sovereign authorization theory as an instrument of political obligation. As we have seen, this is a problematic effort. Some scholars have illuminated a more promising track. Orwin, for instance, argues that Hobbes’ main aim with sovereign authorization is to alleviate subjects of any feeling of guilt arising from obedience to sovereign commands.9 Warrender takes the opposite view, claiming that authorization is meant to indemnify the sovereign against charges from disobedient subjects (Warrender 1957: 110). On our reading both Orwin and Warrender are correct albeit for different reasons. They are right to observe that Hobbes’ primary concern with authorization is to identify moral responsibility for sovereign action, and only secondarily to contribute toward a revised understanding of political obligation. Where they stray is in respect to their focus on individual conscience whether it be of the subject or of the sovereign. Rather when we examine what kind of act authorization is we need to recognize what Gauthier called the “public aim of the act of authorization” (Gauthier 1969: 140, 163). While Gauthier is correct to observe that Hobbes viewed authorization in terms of a public aim, this is, as Orwin and Warrender suggest, only partly true. Gauthier’s error is, however, instructive because he does not acknowledge the significance in Hobbes’ more radical underlying claim about authorization, which is that it does not merely “aim” at a public good, but rather for Hobbes authorization is the founding, primal political act. As the founding political act, or the act that makes political life manifest, authorization introduces a psychological depth not seen in Hobbes’ earlier treatments of contract. Hobbes’ deepened appreciation of the formative, constitutive powers of individuals witnessed in his account of authorization signals his final repudiation of the notion of original democracy we first saw in the Elements: “Men who are in absolute liberty, may…subject themselves, if they think good, to a monarch absolutely as any other representative” (Lev 19.3.119). Authorization also transforms the normative elements of contract theory that were seen as crucial supports for the idea of obligation in traditional, teleological accounts of the origin of political society. Hobbes is proto-Kantian in the sense that authorization involves rational individuals making a contractual agreement the breaking of which must on some level constitute a contradiction of one’s original rational purpose. But Hobbes’ stipulation about the primacy of self-preservation means that the real normative thrust of authorization is a displaced form of political obligation according to which the aim is to

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fortify the obligation of everyone else as opposed to the individual who is actually endangered by punishment for instance. Hobbes’ version of the categorical imperative (which is, of course, not categorical at all) is that it is normally in my self-interest that everyone else apart from me should do their duty! It is not then a matter that I authorize the sovereign to punish me, but rather that each individual firmly believes that everyone else authorized the sovereign to punish themselves. In this scenario of displaced moral responsibility, authorization emerges primarily as Hobbes’ account of political founding, and only derivatively and problematically, as a theory of political obligation per se. How then should authorization inform our assessment of the familiar claim that Hobbes’ treatment of sovereignty depends upon his assumptions about the pre-political origins of political life? In the concluding section, we will briefly reexamine this question in light of the relation between liberalism and nationalism, and with respect to the “legitimate border” problem.

Section 3: Hobbes on Nations and Borders In this final section I would like to offer brief reflections on what Hobbes can tell us about nationalism and borders. Let’s recall Abizadeh’s twin claims: (1) national founding myths are incompatible with liberal principles of publicity and justification, and (2) democratic theory (and the social contract theory upon which it normally depends) fails to demonstrate that there are pre-political grounds for legitimate borders because it offers no way to legitimize borders democratically for both citizens and non-citizen outsiders. While admittedly Hobbes is typically not associated with either nationalism or democratic theory, I will argue that Hobbes is helpful for understanding the nature of the challenge Abizadeh poses because Hobbes originated the idea of representation integral to both nationalism and liberalism; that is the connection between a conception of a government that represents a distinct nation and a government that represents a distinct group of rights-bearing individuals. Arguably it is Hobbes’ theoretical innovations of inherited notions of contract theory that made the concerns of contemporary commentators about nations and borders even intelligible or capable of articulation in the first place. Authorization is undoubtedly a kind of liberal founding myth but it is also disarmingly non-mythical precisely because it is so self-consciously fictive. The artificiality of the artificial person that is Hobbes’ state is hardly concealed. Indeed, this artificiality is central to Hobbes’ nascent idea of political obligation, and thus serves as a stark contrast to nationalist

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mythologies that try to establish the antiquity or connaturality of ethnic identities that came into being in time in the anthropological sense. Hobbes’ authorization theory is designed in part to demonstrate that any consideration of the “pre-political” origins of the commonwealth is politically irrelevant for a number of reasons. First, Hobbes’ innovative use of the idea of representation presupposes a relationship between the social group and the putatively pre-political individual. Authorization pertains to all as much as to each. As such, it is inaccurate to suggest that Hobbes’ version of the argument for the legitimacy of the government is simply self-referential for the sovereign’s role as representative means that individual and group claims are mutually reinforcing. That is to say, the “people” is not a separate political entity from the sovereign because prior to the creation of the sovereign through the authorization process, the political person of the commonwealth did not exist (Zagorin 2009: 62). Second, Hobbes emphasizes that authorization is a formative, constitutive act. The founding of the commonwealth involves “creation out of nothing by human wit” (EL 108). As Runciman says of Hobbes “the multitude makes possible the fiction that they can act as a unit” (2000: 273), but this does not mean that we can assign logical or temporal priority to any specific act in the authorization process over and against any other. This also does not indicate that there is latent personality in the natural multitude of individuals. It may be said that the sovereign “presents the person,” or represents the artificial people that is brought into being through authorization but as we know individuals contract with each other, and thus the sovereign cannot help but “present the person” formed (Lev 18.1.110). The atomistic presupposition of the authorization formula is revealed by the way in which it is described solely in terms of the first person singular: “I authorize…my right…(Lev 17.13.109).” Thus, we likely need to avoid attributing any kind of even latent personality to Hobbes’ conception of the natural multitude for fear of ascribing unwarranted essentialism to him. The transformation of the multitude into a political entity is not therefore a multi-stage process, but it does involve a complex double movement. Even as the principle of representation, on the one hand, differentiates the sovereign and the people as author and actor, the concept of authorization, for its part, means practically equating the will of the multitude with the will of the sovereign certainly much more than we saw in Hobbes’ earlier works (Forsyth 1981: 195). What then does it mean to speak of the “pre-political” in Hobbes’ political theory? We recall in De Homine Hobbes insisted that an author must have the right to act in order to authorize another to act as representative. Strictly speaking, in terms of

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the creation of the commonwealth the authors do not have the prior right to act because the authors are only a people capable of authorship by virtue of having appointed a designated actor. To put it in terms familiar in our democratic theory, authorization is meant to show two things: (1) that there can be no political entity or people independent of the sovereign, and (2) to demonstrate that any demos is naturally bounded and only conventionally unbounded because every demos is itself a construct. Of course, the key distinction for Hobbes is not between democratic and nondemocratic procedure, but rather the difference between what is natural (individuals) and what is conventional (political entities). The artificiality of demos is not territorially limited as it is defined by an agreement among potentially dispersed individuals who recognize the same person or body as sovereign. As the primordial political unit, Hobbes’ sovereign does not exist even in potentia prior to the authorization process described in Leviathan. Let’s consider how Hobbes’ idea of political founding relates to the “legitimate border” problem. The first thing we realize is that Hobbes reversed Abizadeh’s assumptions about what is universal and what is particular regarding the possibility of a boundless demos. For Hobbes, the artifice of politics is more inclusive than the natural condition. This is the case because representation made possible by authorization allows transcending the limits of a natural person by the artificial person that is the commonwealth to potentially a vast proportion. As representative of the state, one person or assembly of people can govern millions. Moreover, insofar as authorization is an inherently political act of founding it signifies Hobbes’ recognition that there must be a mechanism in place for becoming a member of the commonwealth; that is in addition to founding properly speaking. In principle the authorization process described by Hobbes is not exclusionary and it is not territorially limited. The basis for a group recognizing the same sovereign may be a variety of particular reasons (e.g. ethnic, religious, linguistic, or imperial) in addition to the basic promise of securing peace. However, the rules for participating in authorization of the sovereign may also be determined democratically. Although Hobbes certainly does not insist on this, democratic procedures are practically possible and theoretically compatible with absolute sovereignty. Hobbes’ approach to the religious question may shed light on what he can tell us about modern democracy’s purported border problem. Arguably, one purpose of Hobbes’ argument for sovereign authorization was to ground his claims for religious uniformity. As we know from the historical context of the English civil war period in which he wrote

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Leviathan, Hobbes viewed the main political problem of his time to be internecine warfare sparked by religious, sectarian conflict.10 We have seen in earlier sections how Hobbes’ idea of contract replaced the theological foundations of Jesuit and Calvinist consent theory with his own stark voluntaristic account of sovereignty. For Hobbes, representation transforms Church-State relations as matters of individual conscience are subsumed into the vast range of issues left to determination by the sovereign: “Subjects can transfer their right of judging the manner of God’s worship, on him or them who have sovereign power” (DC 15.17.304-05). Hobbes’ interpretation of the meaning of a church is indicative of his fundamental orientation toward natural and artificial boundaries. He denies the political reality of a universal Church: “The universal Church is indeed one mystical body, whereof Christ is the head,” but “which notwithstanding is neither one person, nor hath it one common action or determination” (DC 17.21.353). The boundless church of Christ, as it were, has no legal personality because it has no single authorized representative: “That man or council who hath supreme power, is head both of the city and the Church; for a Church and a Christian city is but one thing” (DC 17.28.368). Hobbes insists that the logic of his representation argument leads to the radical, hyper-Erastian conclusion that “God’s person [is] created by the Will of the State” (De Homine p. 85). The problem of the boundless demos that Abizadeh claims plagues democratic theory appears less problematic in light of our consideration of Hobbes’ idea of contract. For Hobbes, the boundless demos of nature have about as much political meaning as the idea of a universal church. Hobbes invites us to question with a fairly clear democratic conscience whether the boundless demos really has the normative content critics of democratic theory insist it does. Indeed, for Hobbes the very idea of a boundless demos may qualify as an example of absurd speech, a conjunction of unrelated words that mean nothing in material reality such as “round quadrangle” or “free will” (Lev 5.5.24). Insofar as the reality of the demos is made possible only by an intrinsically political act of authorization Hobbes can be seen to actually be a defender of the integrity of the political realm, in contrast to the amorphous claims emerging from nature, in a manner we do not typically associate with classical liberalism. At the very least, Hobbes offers a version of social contract theory that, while certainly not democratic in all respects, does allow democratic theorists to construct a response to the legitimate border problem that empowers democratic deliberation within a community to legitimize borders without the need for (impossible) universal concurrence externally.

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In conclusion, how does Hobbes’ theory of sovereign authorization relate to contemporary debates about liberalism and nationalism? Hobbes’ account of political founding is particularistic, but it is not theoretically or intrinsically exclusionary. Rather the radically self-conscious fiction of collective action that grounds Hobbes’ sovereign authorization argument is hardly the mythological stuff of nationalist dreams. It is, however, an account of political founding that attempts to rationalize the conditions for civic unity, while simultaneously describing a mechanism by which outsiders may join a community even as (more problematically) insiders may leave by withdrawing their consent. As Waldron and Kraynak remind us, Hobbes was an Enlightenment figure who believed that his political project to promote peace through recognized sovereign authority can only succeed if the normative grounds of the sovereign’s legitimacy is not “opaque to the subjects’ understanding” (Waldron 2001: 468; Kraynak 1990). Part of this enlightenment process involves recognizing the unintuitive character of Hobbes’ sovereign authorization theory of political founding, which he admits is more prescriptive than descriptive. Hobbes’s authorization theory does, however, reveal some of the discursive architecture of the modern state for as Hobbes insists authorization involves inter-subjective communication as in principle moral obligation emerges in relation to other subjects rather than to the sovereign. The procedural dimensions of Hobbes’ theory of sovereignty are fleshed out in later chapters of Leviathan dealing with the role of ministers and other civil persons that are non-sovereign institutions of civil society such as universities, churches, and commercial guilds, which Hobbes treats as locations of civil discourse. While Hobbes’ theory of sovereign authorization is in some respects self-referential—reducible to the individual’s pre-political rights—this hardly resolves the integral debates that Hobbes’ account of sovereignty and political founding necessarily produce. Is the legitimacy of sovereign actions due to authorization by the subjects or is it self-generated by the sovereign as the one uncontracted agent in the state? Whether Hobbes intended this or not, the open question about the source of the sovereign’s legitimacy is a locus for discussion about the continuing legitimacy of the state itself.

References Abizadeh, Arash. 2004. “Historical Truth, Nationals Myths, and Liberal Democracy: On the Coherence of Liberal Nationalism.” Journal of Political Philosophy. Vol. 12, No. 3: 291-313.

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—. 2011. “Hobbes on the Causes of War: A Disagreement Theory.” American Political Science Review. Vol. 105, No. 2 (May): 298-315. —. 2012. “On the Demos and its Kin: Nationalism, Democracy and the Boundary Problem.” American Political Science Review. Vol. 106, No. 4: 867-882. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Bellarmine, Roberto. 1928. De Laicis. Kathleen Murphy, trans. New York: Fordham University Press. Forsyth, Murray. 1981. “Thomas Hobbes and the Constituent Power of the People.” Political Studies. Vol. 29, No. 2: 191-203. Gauthier, David P. 1969. The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gellner, Ernest. 1997. Nationalism. New York: New York University Press. Grotius, Hugo. 1925 [1646]. De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres. Rancis Kelsey, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hobbes, Thomas. 1994 [1651]. Leviathan. Edwin Curley, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. —. 1991 [1642, 1658]. Man and Citizen De Homine and De Cive. Bernard Gert, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. —. 1969 [1640]. The Elements of Law. Ferdinand Tonnies, ed. London: Frank Cass & Co. —. 1962 [1668]. Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil War. William Molesworth, ed. New York: Burt Franklin. Hobsbawm, E.J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kraynak, Robert P. 1990. History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mansfield, Harvey C. 1971. “Hobbes and the Science of Indirect Government.” American Political Science Review. Vol. 65, No. 1 (March): 97-110. Martinich, A.P. 1999. Hobbes: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, David. 1995. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orwin, Cifford. 1975. “On The Sovereign Authorization.” Political Theory. Vol. 3, No. 1 (February): 26-44. Pitkin, Hanna. 1964. “Hobbes’ Concept of Representation—I” American Political Science Review. Vol. 58, No. 2 (June): 328-340. Runciman, David. 1997. Pluralism and the Personality of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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—. 2000. “Debate: What kind of Person in Hobbes’ State? A Reply to Skinner.” Journal of Political Philosophy. Vol. 8, No. 2: 268-78. Skinner, Quentin. 2007. “Hobbes on Persons, Authors and Representatives.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’ Leviathan. Patricia Sprinborg, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 157-180. Suarez, Francisco. 1950. Extracts on Politics and Government. George Moore, trans. Chevy Chase, MD: Country Dollar Press. —. 1944. Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suarez, S.J. Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown, and John Waldron, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Waldron, Jeremy. 2001. “Hobbes and the Principle of Publicity.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 82: 447-474. Ward, Lee. 2004. The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warrender, Howard. 1957. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zagorin, Perez. 2009. Hobbes and the Law of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Notes 1 For the role of myth in nationalism, see Hobsbawm 1990: 12, Anderson 1991: 6, Miller 1995: 35, and Gellner 1997: 3. 2 Hobbes 1991 chapter 8, section 1, page 5. Hereafter in notes and text DC ch., sec, pg. 3 But note that Abizadeh identifies John Locke, rather than Hobbes, as the “paradigmatic” theorist responsible for the “fantasy” about the “pre-politically constituted sovereign” (Abizadeh 2012: 879). There are certainly valid reasons why Locke may be seen as a seminal political philosopher of democratic theory (e.g., constitutionalism, rights, limited government), but the discovery of a constructed artificial sovereign belongs to the monarchical absolutist Hobbes rather than the Whig Locke. 4 Thus, while Martinich (1999: 225) perhaps overstates the case when he claims that “all or almost all of the central points of Leviathan had been made by Hobbes in earlier books and manuscripts,” it is fair to observe adumbrations of representation and authorization prior to Leviathan. 5 Skinner (2007: 168-69) argues that the parliamentary writers in the civil war period are Hobbes’ direct opponents, from whom he actually turned crucial ideas about authorization on their head to support monarchy. 6 All references to the Elements of Law are from Hobbes 1969, hereafter in notes and text EL part, chapter, section and page. 7 Runciman (1997: 31) sees this as the basis for a pluralist reading of Hobbes.

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All references to Leviathan are from Hobbes 1994. Hereafter in notes and text Lev chapter, section and page. 9 Orwin perhaps goes too far in suggesting that authorization makes the sovereign subordinate to the subjects (1975: 32). This would be true if authorization justified collective (as opposed to individual) resistance to the sovereign, but even on Orwin’s terms authorization does not confer a collective right. 10 See Hobbes vivid discussion of the role religious conflict played in the outbreak of the English Civil War in Behemoth (1962: 5-35, 113-120).

PART THREE: THE RECONSIDERATION OF CLASSICAL RATIONALISM IN ENLIGHTENMENT REPUBLICANISM

CHAPTER TEN THE LAST LIBERAL? MONTESQUIEU'S REVISION OF MODERN NATURAL RIGHT ANDREW BIBBY

This paper explores the major alternatives to Socratic rationalism by way of an examination of Montesquieu's philosophy of liberalism. While few scholars would deny the significance of Montesquieu's contribution to modern liberal political thought, the question of Montesquieu's commitment to modern rationalism—as the only alternative to classical rationalism—is viewed with some skepticism. Most scholars view Montesquieu's great work, the Spirit of Laws (1748) as, in some form, a repudiation of natural right1 and more broadly, natural law. Rousseau, for example, denies that Montesquieu was interested in the subject—Montesquieu rejected natural law and natural right simply by avoiding them. Émile Durkheim, similarly, viewed Montesquieu as a value-free social scientist and thus a kind of godfather of modern social science. 2 Yet others have claimed Montesquieu’s work to have opened the floodgates of modern relativism and historicism.3 The persistence of interpretative confusion is not at all surprising. As Thomas Pangle states the problem: “Any commentary on The Spirit of the Laws must confront the almost universal scholarly opinion of two centuries that the work lacks order and a unifying plan.”4 While this may no longer be the general view, it is still true that any attempt to discover the “plan of the author” will meet with opposition. That opposition goes back at least to Voltaire, who, in his critique of Montesquieu’s disorderly writing style, argued “that there is neither plan nor order and that after one has read it one doesn’t know what he has read…”5 To deny the relativist view of Montesquieu, readers must not only be willing to accept that there is a design. They must also be willing to accept the testimony of Jean le

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Rond d’Alembert, who argued that there was an important distinction in Montesquieu’s writings between apparent and real disorder. Jean d’Alembert further argued that Montesquieu had in mind two kinds of readers: “vulgar” readers and those “who think.” By this he meant those whose reason “ought to supply the voluntary and reasoned omissions.”6 The interpretive disagreements on the nature and extent of Montesquieu’s liberalism are also understandable. Montesquieu raised serious concerns for his contemporaries in regard to the health or soundness of the English model of commercial modernity (what will be called somewhat colloquially in this paper Lockean liberalism). A faction of Montesquieu scholarship has tried to argue that Montesquieu’s harsh assessment of modernity is rooted in a failed attempt to revive the classical republics devoted to virtue. 7 More common is the relativist Montesquieu, or to use an anachronism that makes the point sharper, the postmodern Montesquieu. Montesquieu’s thought is often viewed either as the first influential case for cultural relativism, or as a precursor to the post-rational and historicist “third wave” which is at the root of many late modern political failures and intellectual diseases. Also plausible, at first glance. Indeed, Montesquieu’s work appears to many as an attack on the English system and therefore an attack on universalism itself. Famously, Montesquieu criticized the English way of life as mundane, gloomy, unspirited, and unphilosophical. “The English are rich, they are free, but they are tormented by their minds. They are weary or disdainful of everything.” On the basis of such passages, some commentators have derided Montesquieu’s depiction of the English example as an “extreme freedom” that could not ultimately be preferable to French monarchy (the survival of which depended on the maintenance of distinctions, manners, and honor). Indeed, Montesquieu’s account of the grim materialism and depressive shallowness of English liberty is hard to reconcile with a “natural rights” interpretation. At times Montesquieu seems to be mocking other misled anglophiles —writers like Voltaire, for example, who had traveled to England three years before Montesquieu, in 1726, and returned to sing its praises.8 In the realm of science, Montesquieu is sometimes a devoted materialist, and a proponent of the modern scientific method; at other times he favors skepticism, and is a pessimist on progress. In his 1734 Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence, for example, Montesquieu develops a novel approach to history—one that takes as its starting point not the “natural order of things” but the “relations” or the rapports between things. Nature is to be understood in relation to society; in relation to moeurs; relative to history and to culture and to climate.9

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True, Montesquieu calls upon the language of natural right, in passages where he speaks of “natural sentiments” and the “voice of nature.” But it is not clear whether such phrases are treated as universal norms to respect, or, more cautiously, as pointing toward a political order that needs to be constructed for the sake of stability or a culturally relative “optimal equilibrium.”10 The question that is most relevant to this volume, as I understand it, is the question of Montesquieu’s commitment to modern rationalism. In beginning with the diversity of things, or to put it more simply, Montesquieu’s open-mindedness, does Montesquieu provide a plausible revision of modern rationalism and natural right—or does he merely provide an alternative liberalism, one that makes natural right philosophy superfluous or meaningless? Those who answer in the latter argue that Montesquieu moved beyond Lockean liberalism by showing the limits of rational demonstration, the power of history, and the incompatibility of social orders due to the relative influence of climate, geography, culture, laws, etc. In this view, Montesquieu did not merely revise Lockean liberalism and modern natural right; rather he showed why political thought must address itself to the new reality of an incomprehensible diversity of values and ways of life. Political science or political thought must evaluate regimes only in a functional sense—that is, strictly in light of the competency of different forms of government in achieving their own ends. Political and social thought cannot judge the ends themselves. Montesquieu’s thought belongs then to a larger project, the anti-modern revolt, one that could either lead to the radicalism of the Rousseauean left or the Nietzschean right. In the next section of this essay, I will argue that this reading of Montesquieu’s place in early modern thought is unnecessary and unsupportable. Montesquieu’s philosophy, difficult and bewildering is it may be, does not require an abandonment of the grounds of modern natural right. It does require a serious encounter with the rhetoric, the method, and the everyday or “social” limits of Lockean liberal philosophy, a subject we turn to now.

Montesquieu’s Revision of Lockean Liberalism In the following section three aspects of Montesquieu’s revision of modern natural right are presented for consideration: 1) Montesquieu’s revision of the rhetorical case for natural right liberalism; 2) Montesquieu’s elevation of history above abstract rational demonstration;

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3) Montesquieu’s example as a sociable philosopher in an increasingly asocial world. Before examining Montesquieu’s rhetorical revisions, it is useful to briefly review the broader context of Montesquieu’s unique “manner of writing.”11 First, Montesquieu was not silent on the necessity of writing carefully, not only in light of the censorship in old regime France, a problem which is well documented,12 but also, in light of Montesquieu’s repeated statements of the prudence to do as little harm as possible to prevailing moeurs, manners, and opinions. 13 Montesquieu’s most important works also have an ambitious educational goal. The purpose of writing, Montesquieu argued, is not to persuade readers of a particular point of view. Montesquieu’s intention—not unlike Socrates—is to improve his reader by improving the way she thinks. “One should not always exhaust a subject, and leave the reader nothing to do. The aim is not to make people read but to make them think” (XI, 20). With these general points in mind, we can now turn to the question of Montesquieu’s revision of the rhetoric of modern natural right. As we will see, Montesquieu’s criticized the rhetoric of modern natural right by attacking the case for property. But Montesquieu’s attack on private property is not meant to undermine the natural rights foundation of property in persons—property as self-ownership. Instead, Montesquieu is attentive both to the real differences among cultures and institutions, and, more importantly, to the obstacles to radical political change in preRevolutionary France.

The Problem of Property in the Old Regime Let us begin with the problem of property in historical context. On the first pass, Montesquieu appears either indifferent, or even hostile, to the idea of a “natural right” to property. This is best illustrated in Montesquieu’s discussion of civil law in book 26. In an apparent rejection of Locke, Montesquieu denies the possibility of claims to a right of property in a prepolitical state. “As men have renounced their natural dependence to live under political laws, so have they renounced the natural community of goods to live under civil laws.”14 From this passage, it appears that Montesquieu shares the Hobbesian view that there is no natural “mine” or “thine.” Montesquieu instead adopts the conventionalist view, later associated with David Hume: property must be understood as the creation of the sovereign state. Montesquieu even goes further, suggesting that the civil laws should always be independent of considerations of “canonical right,” or the laws

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of religion. 15 The suggestion seems to be that property is purely conventional, and therefore, must be reserved to the “domain” of positive law.16 Decades later, critics would complain, precisely on this basis, that Montesquieu’s political philosophy was dangerously absent of a support for private property. Looking back after the revolution, Montesquieu was attacked by critics as responsible, in part, for the socialist confiscations at the end of the eighteenth century and, even worse, laying the groundwork for the social and economic upheavals of 1848.17 Carefully examined in its original historical and political context, however, Montesquieu’s philosophy of property is neither Hobbesian (a creation merely of the sovereign) or “Humean,” an artificial product of a convention decided on by consent. While it is true that Montesquieu breaks from the natural law tradition, at least in the attempt to ground property in the state of nature, he is in fact much closer to the Lockean view of property than is generally acknowledged. This will become clear by re-examining Montesquieu’s views on three related subjects: communalism, criminal justice, and the political context of property in the old regime.18 In Montesquieu’s time, as in ours, the idea of communal ownership was a theoretical and political challenge to a philosophical defense of private property. In 1767, Scottish Jacobite James Steuart published Inquiries into the Principles of Political Economy. In it, Steuart imagined a revival of what he called “the most perfect plan of political economy…anywhere to be met with, either in ancient or modern times.”19 By “perfect,” Steuart was referring to the legendary political economy of Lycurgus, available in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Steuart’s return to the Greeks was part of a larger project, which had begun in France; namely, to combine the examples of ancient communalism with modern (enlightened) monarchy. The possibility of reviving a “perfect system” using Plutarch’s account of Lycrugus in modern monarchy was not at all fantastical. Indeed, the idea had been brewing for decades in Montesquieu’s France. Discussions of a “cult of Plutarch” included all the big names, monarchists and republicans alike: Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, Brissot, Condorcet, Robespierre and Saint-Just. According to one historian, these figures rarely delivered a speech without paying tribute to Lycurgus and his political economy of Sparta.20 In books four and five of the Spirit of Laws Montesquieu clearly states his opposition not only to Lycurgus’ political economy in general, but the idea of communal ownership itself.21 There, Montesquieu clearly indicates to his audience that the communism of Lycurgus is—and should be

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regarded as—a dangerous and hyperbolic fantasy, not unlike the (now obscure) utopian book, the “history of Sevarambes.” The work referenced by Montesquieu in this passage is now all but forgotten. The few scholars who do read it, however, place its importance in the 18th century alongside Thomas More’s Utopia and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. 22 Immanuel Kant had apparently read the book, grouping it with Plato’s “Atlantis” and Harrington’s Oceana as one of the greatest utopian works. 23 Montesquieu’s contemporary, David Hume, needed no introduction to the work when he heard of it, 24 although Hume condemned it by dismissing it lightly as “an agreeable romance.”25 Montesquieu’s rhetorical swing at Lycurgus was, and still is, lost on many readers. But this was not the fault of the writer. In the same section, Montesquieu provided an outline of the faults of communalism. This famous passage was part of a larger argument aimed at destroying his contemporary revolutionaries’ enchantment with ancient republican economic institutions. Persuaded that popular government requires virtue— love of equality—Lycurgus and his followers had designed economic institutions to suffocate humanity’s natural acquisitiveness. These “singular institutions” would ensure strict equality in holdings, which was, it was thought, a precondition for military preparedness and therefore the survival of the old republics. Severe property regulations were necessary not because man was a communal animal, but because the communal republic depended on crushing the instinct for gain. Lycurgus’ goal was to limit ambition “to the single desire, the single happiness, of rendering greater services to one’s homeland than other citizens.”26 It takes no time or effort to see that Lycurgus repulsed Montesquieu. In the same book in which Montesquieu compares Lycurgus to the utopian fiction of Verais, Montesquieu gives a punishing critique of Plutarch’s great legislator, arguing that he had successfully brought into existence a regime that “succeed[s] in mixing [virtue and moderation]” with “larceny,” with the “harshest slavery,” and with “the most heinous feelings” (IV.6). The policies that lead to larceny, slavery, and corruption, are telling. Lycurgus “removed all the town’s resources, arts, commerce, silver, walls.” The citizens would be encouraged to have military “ambition” but without the “expectation of bettering oneself.”27 To promote the love of equality, it was necessary to attack the family. Citizens would be encouraged to have “natural feelings” but not to think of themselves as “child, husband, nor father” (IV.6). There would be drastic provisions for eliminating not only the market (commerce and “silver”) but all private attachments. Only then, Montesquieu notes, did Lycurgus succeed in leading Sparta “to greatness and glory.”28

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Leaving behind the question of the desirability of a revival of primitive communism, Montesquieu also analyzed the benefits and grounds of private property rights in modern commercial societies. In book 6, relating to crime and punishment, Montesquieu expands on his definition of “liberty in relation to the constitution.” Here, Montesquieu introduces for the first time his famous distinction between political liberty and “liberty in relation to the citizen.” Importantly, Montesquieu starts with an assertion that both maligns the old republics for failing to secure private property, while at the same time praising modern and moderate monarchies for its insistence on protecting individual property. Royal justice assumes, and indeed, requires, that “the citizen’s property and life are as secure and fixed in monarchy as the very constitution of the state.”29 In the moderate state, he says, the “honor” and the “goods” of the citizen are threatened “only after long examination.” While due process applies primarily to life, it is important to note that for Montesquieu, protection of life applies regardless of social status or other perceived standards of merit or virtue. In the moderate state, “the head of even the lowest citizen is esteemed.” None of the above gets us to an argument for a “natural right” to property. For space considerations, we can only state the claim and raise the obvious challenge: if Montesquieu believed in this expansive, or even Lockean view of property, why did he not defend those views openly, or in plain view? The main point here is that it is easy to forget or to ignore the critical differences between John Locke’s England, and Baron de Montesquieu’s France. Montesquieu was born in 1689, one year after the Glorious Revolution in England, and one year in to the Nine Years’ War. In France, Louis XIV was working on a plan to consolidate empire. The war was not just about enlarging France’s borders. Louis XIV was also working on enlarging his royal estate. In those years, Louis XIV of France considered the royal domain “absolute.” Indeed, Montesquieu made careful note of the fact that Louis XIV had considered “la disposition pleine et entire” of all the property in his kingdom.30 Montesquieu worried openly that there would be a resurgence of old “absolutist” doctrines, in particular, in relation to property. While the English were working on progress in civil laws, French legal theorists and public intellectuals were arguing about the idea of “inalienable domain.” In England, theories of property tended to be linked in public discourse to private property. In France—even in Montesquieu’s own day—absolutist theories of property were virtually inseparable from the monarchy itself. Montesquieu avoided discussions of an “absolute” right to property, not especially in the old regime, where the

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clergy, the prince, and les villes and les grands had emerged as the “proprietaries de toute la contree.” 31 Indeed, in a revealing passage, Montesquieu warns his reader against absolutist theories of property, noting that the concept of “inalienable domain” is a threat to freedom and to the possibility of reform in France. Claims of private property are “a very modern thing,” neither “known” among the ancients in theory or practice.32 In short, French liberals did not confront the same historical situation as their English counterparts. The resurgence of property as an absolute right—attached to the crown —had serious implications for Montesquieu’s philosophy of liberalism, and for the need for a revision of Lockean rhetoric. As Montesquieu noted sharply, and in various places throughout the Spirit of Laws, the French monarchy was increasingly tipping toward centralized despotism. And absolutist claims to an abstract “right of property” were at the root of those claims. French royalists, for complex historical reasons, had become to view the crown in Montesquieu’s words as a “great fief.”33 This disastrous view of property had been spreading for centuries, like a slow-acting poison: to the bureaucracy, to the “great offices” attached to the king;34 to the aristocracy, who had come to believe in their right to “draw all the fruits and emoluments” from their own lands (now hereditary), and to their exclusive privileges.35 This was not all. The growth of ecclesiastical property raised the stakes further still. In the last books of the Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu described in painful detail the history of the transformation of Church property, which had transformed from mere “possession” into a “fixed estate.”36 The above summary is cursory but sufficient to make two simple observations. First, Montesquieu’s account of property in French history helps to explain the apparent repudiation of private property, in book 26. Montesquieu seems to have viewed the attempt to ground property in some imaginary state of nature redundant in the context of the old regime. The better strategy in pre-Revolutionary France was to emphasize the historical contingency of property, and therefore, the historical contingency of the various (dubious) claims to domain, privilege, exemptions, other conventional rights. The contingency view of property had two significant theoretical advantages and one practical benefit. The main advantage of a “positive law” view of property was that it undermined the historical footing or foundation of French feudalism. It also had the effect, as scholars have demonstrated elsewhere, of setting fire to a necessary public discussion about the civil laws of old regime France.37 Legal historians, Kelley and Smith, have documented this episode of French history in detail. In their

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words, the new rhetoric of property as “convention,” taken by Montesquieu, not only supported the transition to a middle class; it also provided lawyers and intellectuals a particularly important place in the emerging new social order.38 Before and after the revolution, it was the lawyers—not the philosophers or statesmen—who would lead the way in re-assessing property claims, authenticating titles, renewing leases, contracts, etc. As the old regime crumbled, lawyers, not the philosophers, were to provide the historical and legal rationale for “denying anything with feudal taint.”39 Montesquieu’s treatment of property illustrates the rhetorical problem for natural right in old regime France. But it also raises an even more fundamental question. Namely, what is the value of history for natural rights liberalism? Did Montesquieu abandon natural right for history? The following section turns to Montesquieu’s use of history with a view to clarifying the relationship between modern natural right and historical study. The liberal-minded Montesquieu did not approach history as a challenge to natural right. Rather, to borrow a phrase from Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, history was a “laboratory for the political.” Montesquieu spent much or most of his intellectual life in this laboratory. His conclusion, as we will now see, was that the principles of right could not be discovered by philosophy or by reason alone. History needs law and law needs history.

Montesquieu’s Controversial Turn to History The turn to history contains its own intellectual and political hazards, including the place of reason in history; the problematic relationship between biblical time and world history; the question of the progress of society and civilization; and the causes of the rise and decline of imperial government. Chief among these problems, for Montesquieu, was his awareness of the political use of history, in his own day. While it is possible to place too much emphasis on writers like Montesquieu for displacing classical political analysis—of opinions and regimes—with historical study or with the newly fashionable “philosophy of history” movement led by other Enlightenment luminaries such as Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon,40 I would suggest that Montesquieu’s turn to history has a relatively simple motive. History could illustrate the principles of natural right without collapsing under its own weight; i.e., without collapsing under the weight of historicism. To elaborate on this claim, we need to distinguish Montesquieu’s approach to history from his contemporaries. First, Montesquieu’s

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“Philosophy of History” is easily distinguishable from 18th century determinism. While there are passages in which Montesquieu entertains the idea of a “collective soul” or a “chain of infinite causes” that “governs [society]”, and while Montesquieu is famous for introducing physical or natural causes (“the general situation of the country”) to the study of politics, chance plays a bigger role. When we turn to history, he wrote, “we discover momentous, unforeseen events everywhere we look.” The emphasis on “unforeseen” here is precise and deliberate: Montesquieu means something like “unpredictable accident,” in contrast to the idea that world is unfolding in “some inexorable cunning of history.” 41 Montesquieu is not Kant. There is nothing in Montesquieu even remotely similar to Kant’s Idea for a Universal History (1784). We could venture that there is even less of Bossuet’s emphasis on Divine providence. Montesquieu was, as others have shown, trying to free “history from the domination of final causes and lead it back to the real empirical causes.”42 If there is any principle moving history, in Montesquieu, it is better described as something like “circular decay” or “inevitable atrophy.” This is why scholarly opinion tends toward the view of Montesquieu as an “historical pessimist.”43 The tone of pessimism is hard not to notice, from Montesquieu’s tale of the Troglodytes to his greatest historical work on the causes of Rome’s greatness and its decline. That pessimism is evident even in the midst of Montesquieu’s highest praise for England, which includes a bleak forecasting of the causes of the ultimate failure of commercial England in Book XI of Spirit of Laws. But if it is easy to show that Montesquieu was not a prophet of progress, it is less clear how Montesquieu’s turn to history serves—or indeed whether it ultimately undermines—his own principles. On this point, it is worth considering again the context and the politics of the Spirit of Laws and its composition. Simply put, the liberal and indeed revolutionary implications of Montesquieu’s analysis of traditional government put him at odds in a very public way with two very powerful groups: defenders of the traditional aristocracy; and the revolutionaries, whose use—and abuse—of ancient sources for political-revolutionary goals, Greek and Roman writers in particular, were often criticized by Montesquieu as either unrealistic or wrongheaded. Thus Montesquieu’s encounter with history was really a battle with historians, and he fought that battle on two fronts. On the first front, Montesquieu tried to show that the classical republics could and should not be revived. This is not at all to suggest that Montesquieu did not write powerfully, at times, in favor of the classical Greek and Roman republics. “I confess my taste for the Ancients.

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Antiquity enchants me,” he wrote. “And I am always inclined to say with Pliny: ‘You are going to Athens. Respect their gods.”44 The ancients were enchanting because “[they] capture the great and the simple at once; whereas it is almost always the case that our Moderns, when they strive for the great, lose the simple, or in striving for the simple, lose the great.”45 Montesquieu also admired the Greek historians. Such is obvious to even a casual reader of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence, which is filled with compliments to “the judicious Polybius” and numerous others, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Plutarch. Yet when it comes to the Greek philosophers, Montesquieu can seem harsh and even close-minded. In his notes on the pre-Socratics, for example, Montesquieu dismissed them as “paltry” and then claimed that they had “spoiled the entire universe—not only their contemporaries but also their successors.”46 The pre-Socratics were “blinded” in particular by the “search for essences.” This dogmatic rationalism, he argued, eventually infected all of political philosophy. It made it impossible to account for the complexity of the world, or what he will call famously the relation between things. “The same error of the Greeks flooded their entire philosophy; what caused them to create bad physics caused them to create a bad morality, a bad metaphysics. They didn’t sense the difference there is between positive and relative qualities; and as Aristotle was wrong with his dry, wet, hot, and cold, Plato and Socrates were wrong with their beautiful, good, foolish, and wise.” 47 Montesquieu further argued that ancient Greek philosophy neglected the relativity of terms like “beautiful,” “good,” and “noble,” adding to the insult that this blindness was the “scourge of all Ancient philosophy.” It was the core of the problem with “Aristotle’s physics and Plato’s metaphysics.”48 Montesquieu’s criticism of ancient philosophy, however, does not apply, interestingly, to classical political philosophy. Classical political philosophy, according to Montesquieu, does not reduce the complexity of human life to unmanageable or misguided essences. This is an error, from reading only part of Plato, or reading Plato in a particular way. As Montesquieu notes, “You have to reflect on Aristotle’s Politics and Plato’s two Republics if you want to have a clear notion of the Greeks’ laws and mores.” 49 Note Montesquieu’s emphasis on Plato’s Laws. In another famous passage, Montesquieu provides a hint of his own interpretation of the relation of Plato’s Laws to Plato’s Republic. He writes, “I am not one who regards Plato’s Republic as an ideal and purely imaginary thing which would be impossible to put into practice. My reason is that the Republic of Lycurgus seems to be just as difficult to put into practice as Plato’s, and yet it was so well put into practice that it lasted as long as any

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republic known, in its strength and splendor.” 50 The problem with the republic, in other words, is not that it is impossible. The problem is that it is undesirable, and Plato could not have not known that.51 One further consideration on Montesquieu’s opposition to classical thought. The public criticisms of both Plato and Aristotle, when reviewed closely, are essentially side-blows; not real engagements or criticisms of those thinkers. The worst that can be said of Plato in Montesquieu’s public writings is that Plato “was resentful of the tyranny of the people of Athens” (XXIX, 19). The worst public criticism of Aristotle is a tie between two statements: one, that he was jealous of Plato (XXIX, 19), and two, that Aristotle’s writings were prone to abuse, as Montesquieu argued in book 21, in a section devoted to explaining the destruction of commercial values in the West. In that important passage, Montesquieu does not condemn Aristotle. Rather, he merely notes that Aristotle’s writings on usury were exploited by a fanatical brand of Thomists, who combined Aristotle with passages from the Bible in a misguided attempt to curb the enthusiasm for commerce: “Aristotle’s philosophy having been brought to the West, it much pleased the subtle minds which, in times of ignorance, are the beaux-esprits. Scholastics became infatuated with it […]. Thus we owe to the speculations of scholastics all the misfortunes that have accompanied the destruction of commerce.”52 If the first front in Montesquieu’s history was focused on the revival of classical republicanism, the second front focused on the attempts either to revive the ancient monarchy or the traditional nobility in modern France. Montesquieu positioned his history between both of those camps, and set out to undercut two lines of thinking in particular: the Count of Boulainvilliers’ and the Abbé Dubos’, each, according to Montesquieu, who had turned to history themselves in order to “construct” what Montesquieu calls a “conspiracy.” Boulainvilliers’ treatise was a conspiracy against the “third estate.” Dubos’ historical writing “was a conspiracy against the nobility.”53 Such is the context for Montesquieu’s long history and re-examination of the history of France in books 28-31, which are not, as frequently assumed, merely an historical appendix. In opposing these two historians, Montesquieu situated him between the “Romanists” and the “Germanists.” This position was relevant not only as a reinterpretation of the origin of the distribution of intermediary powers, and therefore, the existing “number of servitudes” that persist in the property laws of the old regime. It also implicated modern politics or “Political right” since the knowledge of the history of civil laws was equivalent to knowledge of the foundation of the monarchy. The political implications are not disguised. By examining the

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origins of the civil laws in France, Montesquieu could explain the artificial origins of modern “orders.” In so doing, Montesquieu effectively exposed the deep contradictions of traditional monarchy—a service that in retrospect is not dissimilar to John Locke’s project of dismantling patriarchal monarchy in the First Treatise. Readers who understand this context will grasp the importance of the last part of the Spirit of Laws. It is not that political theory must finally be subjugated by history. Rather, the turn to history performs a mutually reinforcing service to political thought. In Montesquieu’s famous formulation: “History must be illuminated by laws, and laws by history” (XXXI, 2). The acceptance and study of historical diversity—the laboratory of politics—is, in the final analysis, Montesquieu’s own way of resisting relativism, and in that sense, protecting natural right liberalism from historicism or simply bad history.54

Natural Right and Modern Philosophy as a Way of Life At this point it might be objected that of the reasons for thinking of Montesquieu as a source for a renewal of modern rationalism, few of the points made above provide a non-political—and therefore non-historical— reason for reading Montesquieu as a natural right thinker. Leo Strauss once pointed out that historical studies—and by extension, historically minded writers—are relevant particularly in ages of intellectual decline; i.e., when a society has already lost its way. Perhaps there is something unhappy about the need for a return to early modern political thought. A return might imply that Anglo-liberal thought is outmoded; or that nothing can be learned from contemporary culture. 55 But a deeper criticism of Montesquieu’s thought can be imagined. Can a viable recovery of modern liberal rationalism be made in all honesty without also embracing the problems of liberal rationalism, which many view as the cause of our present doubts and wariness of rationalism as such? We now turn to a third feature of Montesquieu’s revision of modern rationalism; that is, Montesquieu’s own example as a philosopher, his own provisions for a model of intellectual virtue in modern times. The thesis of the last section of this paper consists of three smaller claims, which I can only sketch here: first, Montesquieu’s approach to philosophy encourages skepticism of high ideals in moderation. Second, Montesquieu points the way toward a reinvention of the sociability of ancient thought, but on modern or anti-social grounds. Third, Montesquieu’s manner of philosophizing encourages and even demands a familiarity with classical thought. In this sense, Montesquieu’s alternative to classical rationalism is one that repays itself, or one could even say,

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apologizes for itself, by forcing the reader to think more deeply about the meaning of classical philosophy as a way of life.56 First, skepticism of high ideals in moderation. Montesquieu’s philosophy is negative and suspicious, but its goal is not the ultimate replacement of metaphysical or religious quests for truth with merely practical or historical reason. Montesquieu sometimes grouchily complains of metaphysics. Abstract philosophy encourages “indolence,” or it “only deals with big issues,” or it “takes over all of nature” and “makes and undoes gods.” 57 Montesquieu has similar reservations about theology, noting, for example, that he had torn up his early arguments against “M. Bayle” in apparent frustration with the limits of human reason. There is a long Pensées on “Doubts,” which echoes passages in the Persian Letters where he appears to give up on trying to solve big questions, such as predestination, asking “why so much philosophy”? Should not one just humble oneself before an unknowable God”?58 However, and at the same time, Montesquieu was wary of the project of radical doubt in modern philosophy, a position he seems to have regarded as inherently dangerous, unwise, but most importantly, intellectually unjustified. This is clear in both Montesquieu’s quiet or underground debate with Hobbes, Spinoza, and Descrates,59 but also the loud and open scuffle with Pierre Bayle in the Spirit of Laws. In private, Montesquieu argued against Hobbes’ dogmatic atheism, while in his Défense de l’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu distanced himself from both the dogmatic skepticism of the Cartesians, and his religious critics, who, he says, “[have been trying] to make us re-enter the schools of the dark ages.” Montesquieu’s skepticism has rather more of the character of Platonic skepticism, even if he does, at times, apply it harshly to the philosophy of the Greeks. His skepticism is dogmatically modern only in one sense, namely, the profound acceptance of the limits of knowledge and of the requirements of intellectual humility. Montesquieu, like Socrates, understood that the pre-eminent questions (what is justice?) are best approached from what is nearest, or most human, and as a beginning point; i.e., not from an abstract rational deduction from the state of nature. Not unlike Aristotle, Montesquieu took positive law seriously, and in the context of the natural variety of political arrangements. The philosophes rightly viewed this, in retrospect, as a betrayal. It irritated dogmatists like Voltaire and Helvetius that Montesquieu could not bring himself to jettison the oldest Platonic dogmas, such as, that man can not in the end live his life by the lights of reason alone. For some readers, Montesquieu’s moderate skepticism was viewed as reactionary or conservative. Montesquieu—like Socrates—focused his

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great work not on the “new philosophy” of the Enlightenment, but on the question of “how one should live.” This was not only philosophically weak for Enlightenment rationalists, but politically reactionary; it meant that, in the end, Montesquieu would never accept the radical doubt of every form of common sense. It was not a compliment to Montesquieu to compare his moderation to the Socratic or Platonic skepsis. On philosophic sociability. It is true that Montesquieu’s orientation is at its core, “modern.” Montesquieu kept in his possession almost the entirety of Hobbes works, in Latin and French translations. Most readers can easily recognize Montesquieu’s similarity to Hobbes, even if that similarity is overshadowed by his critique of Hobbes in book 1 of Spirit of Laws. In contrast to Hobbes, Montesquieu maintains that mankind is not bellicose, but timid (I.2); thus the supreme importance of science or philosophy, which provides a dose of courage that human beings naturally lack. Yet, Montesquieu also accepts Hobbes’ basic premise that fear (or more accurately, the “marks of mutual fear”) does drive men into society (I.2). That fear turns out to be a transitory passion. The fear of being attacked or killed dissolves, on the one hand, when one realizes that one’s “enemy” is equally fearful; and it is tempered, on the other hand, by the surge of other “sociable” passions, or animal pleasures, like the “charm that the two sexes inspire in each other” and by the pleasure men and women receive from interacting and sharing the bond of knowledge (I.2). But man is not a political animal. The relevant question for this essay is whether Montesquieu’s critique of Hobbes is different from Locke’s critique of Hobbes, either in emphasis or in kind. Like Montesquieu, Locke’s argument rests on the assumption of rationality in the state of nature. The state of nature “has a law of nature to govern it which obliges everyone” (§6). 60 Like Montesquieu, Locke identifies this law as reason, which teaches all mankind “who will but consult it…[that] no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (§6). Also like Montesquieu, Locke rejects the conflation of the state of nature with the state of war.61 Again, Like Montesquieu after him, Locke does not treat the idea of the state of nature as a physical or historical reality; it is “men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth with authority to judge between them; [that] is properly the state of nature” (§19; cf. §89). The novelty of Montesquieu’s revision of Hobbes boils down to sociability—or more specifically, a reclamation of sociable philosophy. One could understand this, in its simplest form, on a biographical level. As Robert Shackleton has shown, Montesquieu gradually turned away from the aristocratic life at court and in law (sociability in its aristocratic form)

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to the world of philosophy and the intellectual circles of the salons and cities. 62 One can think of Montesquieu’s sociability as integral to his writing, and to the project that was his life’s work. The Spirit of Laws is full of examples of Montesquieu’s effort to make even the driest topics— petit commerce, for example—livelier, more interesting, and more human—more sociable. In his private writings, Montesquieu explained his revulsion for dry philosophizing this way: “this new philosophy…speaks to us only in general laws…in pure understanding and clear ideas, and reduces everything to the ‘communication of motion, [and leads] to the loss of the sublime, of poetry, of the spirit of glory and valor.” 63 Montesquieu’s project was, in part at least, an effort to retrieve the “sublime” endeavor of the ancient philosophers, but on modern grounds. Similarly in his political writings, Montesquieu draws important distinctions between various alternative liberalisms that create productive tensions. Think for example of Montesquieu’s famous distinction between traditional English and French monarchies. The best philosophy, he wrote, appear “early in monarchies,” that is, before they become too corrupt with the distractions and attractions of commercial life. The English are now “too occupied [and] do not have the time to be polite.” The English longing for freedom and resentment of inequality creates a “mistrustful atmosphere,” which leads to a devaluing of friendship, and a “hardness of heart.” And this: “The English are almost never brought together by other bonds than those of hatred and the hope of vengeance.” Of all the ways in which Montesquieu’s thought is made sociable, perhaps the most important is his insistence on the study of the “spirit” of a nation (what we might call political culture). This ultimately is what sets Montesquieu apart from other variants of modern liberal thought. The study of politics and the study of society can no longer be disjoined. The study of English constitutionalism can no longer be viewed as analytically distinct from the study of English society. One implication of this final revision is that the study of modern politics should exist in the form of a richer dialogue, or play, with the rest of the modern world. After Montesquieu, liberal political philosophy must take account of the variety of states and societies, and even those “illiberal” governments, whose object is not liberty, but which provide a constant reminder of the fragility of moderate government. Finally, Montesquieu’s example resurrects, although not fully, the example of Socrates. Montesquieu’s impatient critics called his writing “a labyrinth without a thread.” But there was a reason for avoiding the formal philosophical treatise. “One should not always exhaust a subject, and leave

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the reader nothing to do. The aim is not to make people read but to make them think” (XI, 20).

Conclusion The evidence for Montesquieu’s sociable or erotic liberalism64 cannot be explained away simply by saying that, well, Montesquieu is French. This paper has argued that Montesquieu's liberalism is best understand as a critique of early modern liberalism from within. Thus Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws can be viewed as the last major attempt to revise natural right liberalism, on terms that would be recognizable and (broadly) acceptable to its earliest proponents. We have looked at three different ways to understand this claim. First, Montesquieu downgraded the universalist rhetoric of natural rights liberalism, while protecting its core principles. Second, Montesquieu elevated historical reason as a supplement—not a replacement—for rational demonstration. Finally, Montesquieu provided commercial modernity with a model of intellectual virtue that encouraged skepticism of high ideals in moderation; revived the sociability of the philosophic way of life; and re-oriented political thought towards a balanced consideration of the classical roots of modernity itself. These are the primary ways one could plausibly argue that Montesquieu offers a serious and defensible alternative to classical rationalism. Montesquieu’s liberalism not only encourages a comparison to classical rationalism, but requires a serious study of it.

Notes 1

For a discussion, see Zuckert Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights and Modern Constitutionalism, 2 Nw. J. Hum. Rts. 1 (2004). Zuckert contests Lowenthal’s view that Montesquieu was not a natural rights thinker, pointing to book 10 as the place in which Montesquieu’s commitment to natural rights “becomes decisive.” While this article follows Zuckert’s basic insight, I am focused less on Montesquieu’s theoretical discussion of property. I diverge from Zuckert’s analysis in a second way. While I agree that Montesquieu’s modification of Locke’s teaching does not require a fundamental change of Lockean principles, I believe Montesquieu’s modification to be a major and politically important rhetorical modification. This is not the consensus view. Consult Rahe, Paul A. “Montesquieu’s Natural Rights Constitutionalism,” Social Philosophy and Policy 29, no. 2 (2012): 51–81. For a useful attempt to sort out Montesquieu’s natural law views, see Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law (The Hague; Nijhoff, 1970). See also Cecil P. Courtney, “Montesquieu dans la tradition

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du droit naturel”, La Fortune de Montesquieu, Bordeaux: Bibliothèque municipale de Bordeaux, 1995, p. 27-40. 2 See Émile Durkheim, “Montesquieu’s Contribution to the Rise of Social Science,” Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 1–64. Also see Pierre Manent, The City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 11–85. 3 See also George Klosko, “Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Absolute Values and Ethical Relativism in L’Esprit des lois,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 189 (1980): 153–77. 4 Thomas Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on "The Sprit of the Laws" (Chicago, Ill: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), 11. 5 Ibid., 11. 6 Ibid., 11. 7 See Judith Shklar, “Montesquieu and the New Republicanism,” Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 265-79). However, as a clarification of the profound difference between modern and ancient republicanism. Judith Shklar notes, for example, that Montesquieu had “set the terms” in which republicanism was to be discussed, not only in Europe but in the young American republic.7 In the end, Montesquieu’s occasional note of appreciation of the austere republics of antiquity does not outweigh his support for commercial republic. And in any case, the debate in France was forward looking. Shklar notes that Montesquieu inspired research in to two novel kinds of republicanism in the second half of the century.7 One was constructed by Rousseau, a “theoretical” republicanism modeled partly on Montesquieu’s portraits of the political economy of Sparta and Rome. The other was based on the English system, which combined commerce with religion and a passion for individual liberty, and was surrounded by a constitutional machinery that became a “blueprint for self-limiting government that served the American founders at Philadelphia.” 8 That journey became the basis of Voltaire’s famously affirmative portrait of English society in his Lettres philosophiques (1734), in which Voltaire celebrated England not only as more free, and more powerful, but apparently happier than the French monarchy. It is not unimportant to note that Montesquieu was affected by the consequences of Voltaire’s praise of England. For the effort, Voltaire was arrested, his books burned, and the philosopher forced to flee. 9 The core of that idea is in book 1 of L’Esprit des lois. For many readers, Montesquieu is seen as giving a manifesto on the limits of the “given.” Book 1 reads as a bold denial of the natural rights idea of a constitution or constitutionmaking. 10 Benrekassa Georges, “Nature”, translated by Philip Stewart, in A Montesquieu Dictionary [online], directed by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS Lyon, September 2013. URL: http://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/1376478659/en

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11 Readers interested in this question should consult Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, Ch. 2. 12 The Spirit of Laws is replete with disclaimers and attempts to disassociate his views from other potentially revolutionary ideas. But it was not only the official state censor. To take only one example, Montesquieu’s work was attacked relentlessly by French Jansenists, who reported Montesquieu to the ecclesiastical authorities with a variety of dangerous accusations; i.e., that he was a “deist,” or a “Spinozist,” and that his work was at the vanguard of a movement—led by Voltaire—to accelerate the spirit of irreligion in France. Voltaire, not surprisingly, did not attempt to defend Montesquieu. In his Remerciement sincère à un homme charitable Voltaire claims Montesquieu as one of his tribe, which includes the radicalizing Pope, Bayle, and Locke. Maire Catherine, “Jansenisme - Jensenism”, translated by Philip Stewart, in A Montesquieu Dictionary[online], directed by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS Lyon, September 2013. URL: http://dictionnairemontesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/1377638918/en 13 Take for example Montesquieu’s attempt to shield or minimize the damage of Bayle’s teachings, while simultaneously pointing out the many areas of agreement. “Bayle pretends to prove “that it is better to be an atheist than an idolater; which is to say, in other words, that it is less dangerous to have no religion at all than to have a bad one”, but “this is nothing but a sophism” (EL, XXIV, 2). 14 XXVI.15. 15 XXVI.8-9. 16 XXVI.16. 17 In Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, 164. 18 In contrast to Locke, who grounds property in self-ownership, primarily, Montesquieu grounds property internally or psychologically, as a requirement of personal liberty. 19 Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 20 Ibid., 90-91. 21 Carrithers, “Democratic and Aristocratic Republics,” 22 Laursen and Masroori characterize it, in fact, as a combination of the two. 23 Kant, Political Writings, 188. Kant said it was full of “brilliant ideas” “that have never been tried in practice.” 24 David Hume, “Of Polygamy and Divorces.” 25 It tells the story of a group of unfortunates “shipwrecked” on Terra Australis (the “southern continent”). The novel then describes the construction of an “ideal city” (which takes the name “Sevarinde”). And while the novel is presented as a “true work” by the narrator, it is clearly not supposed to be interpreted as such—as a real possibility. On the contrary, Verais’s work is hilariously fanciful, presenting as it does a perfect society where property has been abolished, poverty eradicated. Men dance with naked virgins in the hills, cavort with talking animals, and travel by unicorn. 26 V.1.

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IV.6; see also IV.7. IV.6. 29 VI.1. 30 XXX.14. 31 XXIII.28-29. 32 XXXI.7. 33 Ibid. 34 When offices became hereditary, he noted, they were abused greatly. XXXI.2829. 35 On the “judicial profit” or Freda see XXX.20. Some privileges were merely “useful” rights like tax exemptions, but more importantly, Montesquieu noted that property rights also entailed social rights that were honorific, including pensions and occupational entitlements 36 XXX.11-22. Originally, lands (“great fiscs”) were provided to the clergy for two main reasons: it was easier for the “census” or for tax collection purposes, and because, in Montesquieu’s words, “the owners of lands believed that by their servitude they participated in the saintliness of the churches.” Over time, the ecclesiastics became increasingly involved in campaigns, employing vassals with their own armies. The documented records establishing the “patrimonial” justice of the churches in their territory were offset by the absolutist revisionist histories of Abbé Dubos. Corruption, kickbacks, and arbitrary decrees of kings, threatened by the loss of their own domains, were accompanied by political promises to preserve “honors” and ranks forever. Montesquieu also mentions the growth of bureaucratic interests (XXXI.4), the conversion of ecclesiastical goods into fiefs (XXXI.9), and the establishment of tithes. Church property was not secure, and a great deal of property was turned over during the Norman disturbances (XXXI.10). But the wealth of the Church was partially restored through the establishment of tithes (which became universal after commoners were exploited by being told that devils were eating their corn for not paying them (XXX.12). The establishment of the tithe was acceptable to the Church, as a new “kind of good,” the main advantage to the clergy “was that later usurpations would be more easily recognizable, as they were given exclusively to the church.” 37 Historians have noted that it prepared a revolutionary re-evaluation of property laws in a government where property adhered to persons and not only to things; see XXX.15. 38 Donald R. Kelley, and Bonnie G. Smith. "What Was Property? Legal Dimensions of the Social Question in France (1789-1848)." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128, no. 3 (1984): 204. 39 The strategy of the eighteenth century jurists, in treating property as purely the creation of civil law, contained a number of obvious flaws in application. In one sense, it was a partial surrender to the old regime reactionary philosophy according to which “property” exists only by virtue of the sovereign. But as the eighteenth century drew on, it became clear that this view of property was also a significant threat to the new class of owners, including the legal profession, as the revolution moved leftward. This is a problem that can not be summarized briefly here. In 28

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1793, the Assembly had declared land associated with feodalite as forfeit. With increasing frequency, the Assembly acted on the “belief that the conventional basis of property made it subject to legislative decision.” Emboldened partly as a result of a weak theoretical commitment to property, confiscations spread beyond feudal property to uncultivated fields, the seizure of the property of emigres, and the establishment of wage and price controls.39 The possibility of legislative tyranny raised the question to liberal philosophers in the nineteenth century anew: where was the concern for property and liberty? 40 See David Carrithers, “Montesquieu’s Philosophy of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 47, No.1 1986, pp. 61-80. 41 This is an appropriate formulation that I borrow from Carrithers, p. 71. 42 The opinion of Cassirer, in Carrithers, p. 79. 43 Gilbert Chinard, “Montesquieu’s Historical Pessimism,” in Studies in the History of Culture (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1942), 161-72. 44 Pensées, no. 110. 45 Pensées, no. 117. 46 Pensées, no. 211. 47 Pensées, no. 799. 48 Ibid. While I have discussed these elsewhere in a different context, I am grateful for the useful arrangement of these sources in Touchefeu Yves , “Greek writers”, translated by Philip Stewart, in A Montesquieu Dictionary [online], directed by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS Lyon, September 2013. URL: http://dictionnairemontesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/1377671347/en. It should be noted that this article supports the conclusion in Yves; that “it is in the field of political philosophy that Plato and Aristotle find their greatest importance.” 49 Pensée no. 1378. 50 Pensées no. 1208. 51 Note the comparison to Lycurgus: it is not enough to say that it is merely impossible; the lesson of Lycurgus is that his scheme was tyrannical at the political and the personal level. 52 Here Montesquieu is referring to the Scholastics or “schoolmen” adoption of Aristotle’s explanation of ‘usury’ in the Politics (esp. bk. I, chaps. 9, 10 [1256b401258b8]); the criticism has nothing to do with Aristotelian rationalism. The attack is on Thomism, or a particular breed of Thomism, which combined Aristotle with biblical arguments against lending money at interest, thus creating the moral basis for condemning moneymaking and finance “without distinction.” With the introduction of the religious case against lending and moneymaking, commerce as a profession became associated with dishonesty. 52 And while it is true that Scholastic theologians, including Aquinas, would later adopt more nuanced, less hostile, teachings toward trade (distinguishing, for example, between kinds of “legitimate profits” and allowing for an appreciation of property and the value of work), here, Montesquieu focuses on the theological mistakes of equating usury and immorality. This mistake, ironically, set in motion the persecution of the Jews (who became “wealthy by their exactions”), and thereafter, a series of events and innovations that would culminate in the revitalization of commerce.

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XXX.10. See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 20-25. 55 See Leo Strauss, “Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” Review of Metaphysics, V, No. 4 (June 1952), pp. 576, 585. 56 Compare, “Epilogue,” in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 907937. 57 Pensées, no. 202 58 See Rétat Pierre , “Philosophy”, translated by Philip Stewart, in A Montesquieu Dictionary [online], directed by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger, ENS Lyon, September 2013. 59 See Werner Stark for an interesting summary, in Montesquieu: Pioneer of the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge 2001/2002), pp. 1-15. 60 Above references are to sections to the Second Treatise. 61 There can be “peace, good will, mutual assistance” in the state of nature (§19). 62 Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: a critical biography, Oxford, 1961. 63 Pensées, nos. 112, 761, 810. 64 To borrow a phrase from Montesquieu scholar Diana Schaub, who has been an inspiration for this chapter. 54

CHAPTER ELEVEN ADAMS, TURGOT, AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS TIMOTHY W. BURNS

Students of the American Founding are of course familiar with the thought of John Adams, but are less likely to be familiar with the thought of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune (1727-1781). Turgot was a French political economist, Intendent of Limoge for 13 years, and, briefly under Louis XVI, finance minister, whose reforms, if executed, may have averted or at least delayed the French Revolution. His respect among some Americans at the time of the founding may be glimpsed in the fact that Thomas Jefferson had two busts gracing the entry of his Monticello estate: one of Voltaire, the other of Turgot. A follower of Locke and Montesquieu, friend of Diderot and the Encyclopaedists and of French physiocrats Quesnay, Dupont de Nemours, and Vincent de Gournay, and tutor of Adam Smith, Turgot was a champion of what we would today call classical liberal economics and classical liberalism. In 1781 he wrote a letter to the English champion of American independence, Dr. Price, responding to Price’s Additional Observations on Civil Liberty (London: 1777).1 The letter criticized the 13 American states for slavishly following the British in having different branches of government, with checks and balances on these class-based branches. The letter was fateful, in that it provoked an extended response from John Adams, published as Defense of the Constitutions of the United States in 1786-87, a response that became an important source of understanding the branches of government in what was soon to be proposed as the new United States Constitution. Adams sought to demonstrate that, contrary to Turgot’s claim, three natural classes, manifested throughout human history and not only in England, are reflected in the constitutions of the American states. The dispute reveals in turn two quite profoundly different understandings of the new science of government directing the proponents of the modern, commercial republic

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and the new understanding of human beings on which it rests. As we shall see, Adams’ response to Turgot missed the radical nature of the enlightened, commercial republic Turgot sketches—its attempt to wipe out deep longings that give rise both to political ambition and religious devotion—and the result was Adams’ misleading of the Anti-Federalists in the debate over ratification of the U.S. constitution, against Federalists and others (like Jefferson) who understood the enlightenment and the new, tripartite representative government much more along the lines of Turgot and his illustrious predecessors. I close with brief reflections on the subsequent state of this political-intellectual drama, in the works of Rousseau, Constant, and postmodernism.

Turgot’s Letter: Demystification of the World through Liberal Democracy After attacking British reflections on government as (with the exception of Price’s work) surprisingly unenlightened, including an attack on the notion of a republic of laws and not of men—a notion to which, of course, Adams subscribes—Turgot turns in his letter to Price to a judgment of the state constitutions in America. He wishes to see if there will emerge in America, as he and his friends hope, a new people enjoying their rights and governed, as he says, “by nature, by reason, and by justice.” As we will see, he is looking for a people governed in accord with modern Lockean principles. But he finds the state governments that Americans have produced to be deficient in four ways. Turgot’s first complaint is that the state legislatures in the United States have thoughtlessly imitated the British, in being bicameral and in having an independent executive, in an attempt to balance powers. In England, Turgot argues, this balancing has been caused strictly by an historical accident: the long-standing need of parliament to balance out the preponderance of royalty (279, middle). Since republics are founded on the equality of all citizens, the balancing of a non-existent royal branch makes no sense in America, and constituting different bodies will be a source of divisions rather than stability. “By striving to prevent imaginary dangers, they have created real ones.” Turgot’s example is curious but quite helpful. He does not speak of the cultivation of an aristocracy or a monarchy that could be caused by the creation of branches of government representing these. Instead he uses the example of another class, the clergy. He finds some American states’ exclusion of clergy from public offices to be a mistake, since it will only unite clergy as a body against the state. All that is needed, he argues, to prevent religious oppression by the

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clergy is religious toleration (for which he had advocated in Catholic France).2 His second complaint is that state governments are too strong over and against both national and local governments (280). Both complaints are easily understood and widely noted. The third and fourth complaints are more important and of more moment, since they explain the ground of the first two—of why, when “nature” is followed, there will be no distinct classes nor regions needing representation. The American states’ constitutions, Turgot finds, have given insufficient attention to the fact that there are but two natural classes: propertied and non-propertied. This claim must be rightly understood. It is helpful to note that Marx would also famously argue, 67 years later, that with capitalism having done its work, only two classes remain in human history. Those two classes were according to Marx bourgeoisie and proletariat, with the former on its way to History’s dustbin. Turgot is here arguing for the advance of what Marx would call capitalism but which Turgot understood as liberalism, over and against Europe’s ancien regime. He claims that the constitutions that will bring about the death of all artificial classes are those that build on the natural class distinction between propertied and non-propertied. Other classes, he argues—and this would include the classes of clergy, of the virtuous, of the wise, of nobles by “birth” or “blood,” of serfs, peasants, craftsmen, and kings by divine right—are artificial and should be accorded no place nor acknowledgement in any constitution. Here Turgot—who lost his post as French economics minister when he attempted to abolish the levee that had since Louis XIV sustained the French aristocracy—most conspicuously follows John Locke, and on this point John Adams will spend hundreds of pages attempting to refute Turgot’s thesis with the claim that there are three permanent natural classes. Turgot’s fourth and final complaint against the American state constitutions follows from the third: American states are foolishly attempting to regulate commerce among themselves rather than instituting free trade, which should be seen as a corollary of the natural right to property (280-81). Turgot sees, quite correctly, that his argument has a momentous consequence. In a word, the nation-state is finished, if the corollary concerning free trade is fully understood. For as he suggests, commerce and the private property on which it is based, when left to themselves, produce a natural homogeneity among peoples, and an equality of economic progress. Leaving each state to regulate its commerce with others will, on the other hand, perpetuate an artificial division of states, with diverse laws and manners and opinions. As Locke had attacked sacred customs,3 so does Turgot find that nature, which

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speaks universally, will when followed eliminate diversity of customs, laws, manners, and opinions, and lead to a salutary, rational homogeneity. Mere chance determines local deviations from the natural, and only ancient and vulgar “prejudices” speak for preserving the prerogatives of a nation or a state over and against those of others. Turgot takes this argument very far, and in his attack on any and all high goals to which sovereign nations claim to aspire he anticipates, once again, the arguments of Marx. The nation has in truth, he argues, no venerable, high, exalted end over that of preserving the freedom of the many individuals within it, and protecting those individuals’ property from robbers and conquerors. The nation has, Turgot insists, only a “pretended” interest in other things: in protecting its own people’s trade, in forcing its citizens to buy locally or nationally, in acquiring territory by conquest, in inspiring other peoples with dread, or in “excelling them in the glory of arms” or even in the glory “of arts and sciences.” All forms of national glory, that is, are artificial. The tightness you may feel in your throat during the national anthem is based on a delusion, Turgot suggests, and he had entertained hopes that Americans might be the first people to put that delusion to rest. The interests of private property and the bodily wants that property serves know no borders.4 It is artificial, he contends, for the various states in the U.S. to imitate Europe in these matters, not simply because there are divisions in the U.S. (and, as he has noted, there are or were some), but rather because the divisions that exist in Europe, like all such divisions, are artificial, belong to the past, and are on the verge of exiting human affairs. The paean that Marx would later sing in praise of the “revolutionary part” played by the bourgeoisie in ripping away the artificial, illusory bonds and claims to rule that had always been proffered in the past5 is here shown to be the clear, conscious intention of a leader of the new, modern, representative, commercial state, an intention guided, however, by a sense of justice.6 If the interests of a nation are “pretended interests,” as Turgot repeats (281), it is because the territory of the nation belongs not to the nation but to the individual proprietors of the soil. The state exists to serve those proprietors. And the natural division of states, therefore, insofar as there is one, is determined by the inhabitants’ opinion of where they find it most convenient to conduct their business; it is this that should determine where the geographic boundaries of states lie. And if the glory of arms is a mere pretended glory, founded on a mere pretense of a nation’s superiority over others (281), it should be abandoned in favor of “the felicity of peace,” with which it cannot compare. Here then, in the work of its early proponent as in its later, 19th century state, when Tocqueville observed it,7

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and as we see it in its most advanced state today in the European Union, the liberal order favors peace over war, prosperity over glory, and physical satisfaction of needs over spiritual responses to allegedly higher callings. Replacing “the glory of arms” is the more democratic “glory of arts and sciences,” a glory that belongs not to a nation but to “every one who has spirit to acquire it” (281). Those arts and sciences, as both Locke before him and the American Constitution after him (in the only mention of “rights” in the un-amended document, the provision for patents and copyrights —Art. I, sec.8) asserted, are to be practiced for the great material benefits that they can provide to everyone. “There is a harvest of this kind abundantly sufficient for everybody; the field of discoveries cannot be overtilled, and ALL profit by the discoveries of all” (281).

Adams’ Attempt to Answer Turgot If Turgot is among the most progressive critics of American constitutionalism at the time of the founding—and he was the first to write a treatise on Human Progress: A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind (1750), the likely source of Jefferson’s faith in such progress—Adams is with good reason considered one of the more conservative, and Christian, of the American founders in matters of religion and morals.8 He begins his book, however, in an apparent agreement with Turgot, by observing the progress in the arts and sciences over the previous four centuries and the corresponding “advance of civilization and humanity,” which is making Europe into “one community, or one single family.” A difference between him and Turgot begins to emerge, however—a claim, in fact, to a limit on progress in the face of human nature—as Adams elaborates on the progress of humanity: that progress must go hand-in-hand with progress in the “theory and practice of government” away from monarchy and toward checks and balances, an independent judiciary, the recognition of rights of petition and remonstrance, of property, and of the press, as well as the rise of “public opinion,” commerce, religious toleration, and finally, a government of laws and not of men (283). This, he continues, has brought about a “progress in education and society, in knowledge, and in virtue” (284), since, as Adams knows, virtue has always been at home not in large despotisms but, as Montesquieu points out, in small republics. The difficulty, Adams argues, is that such republics have always been shortlived. It is in extending the lives of such republics that the modern science of government excels, but its excellence depends, as Adams will argue, on recognition of three natural, permanent classes of men.

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That republics have hitherto been short-lived has been caused, Adams argues, by an ignorance that the new science of free government has remedied, a science characterized by three discoveries made since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans: 1) representation, 2) separation of powers, and 3) a balance of powers in the legislature, in three branches. And the three “branches of government” brought into being by the new science of politics are an executive, a Senate, and a House of Representatives. Adams singles out Representation as aiming at “the sense of the people, the public voice,” preserved by keeping the representatives on a short leash and eliminating corruption at the polls. The preservation of this popular voice is in fact the overriding goal of the new science of politics. The popular voice needs preserving because it is ever threatened by the other two branches of government. Checking and balancing the three branches is then the means—the absolutely crucial means—of preserving popular representation. With this argument Adams intends to show that the branches and the checks on each branch seen in the American states are not a merely accidental part of British government adapted in slavish imitation of them. They are instead based on a correct understanding of human nature. But how does Adams establish this, and what does he mean by checks and balances of the branches? And how does checking the popular branch help to preserve popular government? Adams’ initial statement of the difficulties manifest in the politics of the ancient world helps us begin to answer these questions. “When kings were abolished,” he argues, “aristocracies tyrannized; and then no balance was attempted but between aristocracy and democracy. This, in the nature of things, could be no balance at all, and therefore the pendulum was forever on the swing.” The “balance” to which Adams refers is, then, not between “powers” (executive, legislative, judicial) but instead between proponents of regimes: aristocrats, democrats, monarchs. These members of three grand, permanent parties that promote these three types of rule and, indeed, three ways of life, through legislation, are for Adams the center of the focus of the new science of politics, whose progress consists in understanding how best to balance them in their legislative capacities. So while Adams sees in “aristocratical” and “democratical” partisans the source of the Corcyrean civil strife so vividly described by Thucydides (whose description Adams quotes at length), he disagrees with Thucydides’ conclusion that such horrors as were manifested in that strife will always be manifested, so long as human nature remains the same (286). Human nature will indeed remain the same, and there will indeed ever be aristocratic and democratic (as well as monarchic) parties. But, claims Adams, human nature can be controlled in a way that Thucydides

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did not see, by balancing the three permanent political parties.9 Had the ancients possessed knowledge of the means to balance parties, there would not have been the great numbers of men—most of them nobles—killed or exiled in the ancient world (as estimated by Hume). American states, in contrast to ancient cities known to historians like Thucydides, balance parties, affording members of each a share in legislation. As the nobles in a monarchic government actually support the monarchy through checking the monarch, limiting and moderating his scope of action and thereby stopping the people from insurrection, so would members of a senate, “the most noble, wealthy, and able in the nation” act, in counselling a prince, as a check on him, and he and his armies on them (288). And so do the senates of the American states (583). Their houses of representatives, similarly, are the branch of the popular voice (289) and thereby one of the three branches of what Adams calls “free government.” That is, while other American founders, such as Jefferson and Madison, conceived of the senate as a chamber of sober second thought, Adams envisioned it as the home of the aristocratic party, part of what he dubs a “democratical mixture” preserved by means of a “strong executive,” that is, by the monarchic branch (290). So aristocratic is the senate that Adams describes it as the place of political ostracism (290-91), a place with seats held on the basis of merit and hence sought after in keen competition by those who might otherwise be competing for the monarchy, whose principle is wisdom and virtue (cf. 288). Adams spends the better part of 300 pages analyzing every famous republic known to have existed in order to make his case, against Turgot, that these three classes of men are permanent and hence that the American states are engaged in no mere slavish emulation of the British government. He argues with particular vigor that there will always be public ambition, always human beings of an aristocratic bent who argue that the best deserve to rule—as indeed, one hears argued for example in Shakespeare’s plays, be they set in ancient Rome or medieval Scotland or modern Italy. It is this ambitious type above all that must be checked, he argues, for the sake of preserving the popular voice and thereby preserving the balance needed for free government. Unlike Turgot, Adams does not at all envision a withering of ambition, of the hunt for glory, nor the privatization of the moral life or the eclipse of the political by the economic as the driving force of life. He does not see, or does not think, that the republics that are being set up in America will be the end of those deep longings that had hitherto animated political life, as Turgot had argued all modern republics would eventually be.

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To better grasp the significance of this difference, it is helpful to consider another sphere in which the longings in question have manifested themselves: in religious faith and deeds. Jefferson, Turgot’s greatest admirer among the American founders and the most forceful proponent of human progress, foresaw the practice of religion in America as moving inexorably toward Unitarian universalism, aided and abetted by the privatization of religion that official toleration would bring about, just as the abolition of primogeniture could prevent the rise of an aristocracy. As he suggests in his query “On Religion” in Notes on the State of Virginia— in which he is dependent on Turgot’s work10—what animates religious devotion and hence religious warfare is not a love of God nor a love of the truth, nor any love at all. It is instead vanity, which can be taken out of play to the detriment of religious devotion. “Our sister states in New York and Pennsylvania…have made the happy discovery, that the best way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play.”11 Abolish an established church and you remove the affront that men feel to their pride or vanity in being told who and how to worship; once that is removed, and men can worship as they please, they become indifferent to religious doctrines and seek other means of gratifying their vanity. Fifty years after he penned the Declaration of Independence, moreover, Jefferson expressed the hope that it would eventually be to all the world a signal “arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish superstition and ignorance had persuaded them to bind themselves,” allowing the light of science to rescue them from the pernicious doctrine of divine right of kings.12 Adams, too, directly addresses the question of religion in his Defense of the Constitutions of the United States, and agrees in part with Jefferson’s outlook (291-93). He presents every republic of the past as having been founded on a fraudulent appeal to a god or gods, and the United States as the only country in which this will never be the case (291, 292, 293). He argues that the enlightenment of the people has protected them from the “monkery of priests, or the knavery of politicians” (293). Yet one sees in his writings no hope that human beings will become tamed in their religious deeds or speech, or have their hitherto apparently strongest longings atrophy through their pursuit of commercial success. In fact, over and against the authority of “the monkery of priests, or the knavery of politicians” Adams presents “the authority of magistrates and the obedience of citizens” in America as “grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion” (293, emphasis added). As religion—enlightened, Protestant or Reformed religion, to be sure—will remain, so too, for Adams, will the ambitions that have always

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characterized human beings. Hence the three branches of legislature (monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic) are permanent, a “democratical mixture” ever needed to preserve free government. Nor has the new science of politics, found largely among British writers, found anything new to stabilize this “mixture” and preserve democratical authority than “the balance, and that only” (298). The discovery of the need for that balance has, finally, not been the result of any radical new path in political philosophy. To the contrary, according to Adams “[t]he English have, in reality, blended together the feudal institutions with those of the Greeks and Romans, and out of all have made that noble composition, which avoids the inconveniences, and retains the advantages of both.”13 If Turgot and Adams are both heirs of the arguments of Locke, Turgot has grasped and wishes to promote the radical, novel end of Locke’s argument. In his promotion of the new science of politics Adams is either an unaware foot soldier of the radical enlightenment promoted by Turgot, or a quiet critic of that enlightenment, one who is intent on maintaining within the modern world a vision of the classical Christian republic, a free government now fortified by the new doctrines of representation, separation, and balance.

Adams’ Dispute with Turgot over Aristocratic Ambition We may the better grasp the profound effect that Adams’ argument had on the founding, especially through the Anti-Federalists, by first grasping the agreement and then the disagreement that Adams has with Turgot over classes of men and their relation to the new American Constitutions. Adams quotes Turgot’s complaint against the American states’ constitutions: “Instead of collecting all authority into one centre, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They endeavor to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens, and as if establishing different orders of men was not a source of divisions and disputes” (299). Adams might—and were he Madison or Hamilton, he likely would—have replied to this charge as follows: M. Turgot, our branches of government do not reflect different “orders of men.” They merely reflect different functions of government, powers, which we find it prudent to divide one from another: executive, judicial, and legislative, with the latter comprised of two parts, a popularly elected large part, and a regionally elected part of older men acting as a body of sober second thought. The sovereign is the

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people, and we divide government to ensure that the people remains unoppressed by its magistrates.” Instead of saying something to this effect, Adams actually agrees with Turgot’s fundamental premise: the branches of our governments do indeed reflect and represent three different orders of men—three classes. Where Turgot had argued that classes are disappearing owing to the securing of the individuals’ right to private property, and with classes, nations, Adams finds that the constitutions are already, as Turgot had hoped, based on nature and reason. He denies, that is, that there soon will be a universal rough equality in talents and ambition among men, and a reduction of classes to two economic ones. Adams agrees with Turgot, secondly, that the creation of branches of government could actually increase discord by increasing class divisions that might otherwise be going into dormancy, under the impact of the right to private property. Having the three branches, including a Senate, he states (in his “Recapitulation”) produces “ardent aristocratical ambition” (379). In America, of course, the aristoi are not merely conventional—not founded and sustained by primogeniture—but “natural” (380, 382). It is these natural aristoi whom Adams intends when he speaks of “the few” (382), and when he says, in his conclusion, that their foundation is in nature (579). Members of this class, he adds, always form parties (58789), and will do so not only at the state but also at the federal level. In still greater agreement with Turgot, Adams adds that there will, however, also be an “artificial aristocratical body” in every state in America, which will form “aristocratical parties.” Joining this artificial “aristocratical body” will be military leaders, generals who will promote “men of family, property, and abilities” (581) as “fittest for service.” Such men will have a necessary contempt for “the rank and file” (581). They will all be “of patrician families” (582), who can be trusted by the others because their character is vouched for by their family. Hence Adams eventually speaks of “gentlemen, that is to say, friends and connections of the rich, well-born, and well-educated members of the house” (583), and of “aristocratical families” (584) and even of royal families, patricians, and nobles. These, he makes clear—and, as we will see, the Anti-Federalists were listening—are not to be trusted, but dreaded: they are ambitious, avaricious, and artful. They are ever searching to find a way to gain the regime to themselves (585). It is in part because Adams sees the end of government not simply as liberal, not simply as is stated in the Declaration, but as having as ends the securing of the “lives, liberties, properties, and characters of the citizens” (585, emphasis added) that he sees a natural place for “merit,” or considerations of worth or desert, as enduring in the new type of government. And where there is a place for

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these, as there must be if there is to be balanced government, the natural aristoi will be joined by an artificial aristoi of connected, less talented, less virtuous, but no less ambitious artificial aristocrats. It is the perceived threat posed by the rise of such aristocrats— especially of the southern, slave-holding variety—in the proposed constitution of 1787 that became the greatest concern of the AntiFederalists, some of whom even came to see the new constitution as the result of a plot to form a regime that would effectively silence the popular voice and its proper branch in a new, consolidated government.

The Anti-Federalists, The Classical Republic, and the Three Classes of Men Before turning to the Anti-Federalists’ expression of this perceived threat in the new constitution, it is important to note that there is a broad acceptance by the Anti-Federalists of the political teaching of John Locke, that is, of the principal tenets of modern political rationalism. Like the Federalist, the Anti-Federalists assert the possession by individuals of inalienable “natural” rights, or selfish but justified claims of the individual, in a state of nature; they argue that we emerge out of that dangerous state by means of a social contract, that the securing of individual rights is the purpose of government, and that individuals need to be represented in such a government if they are to remain free.14 “No man when he enters into society,” Agrippa argues, “does it from a view to promote the good of others, but he does it for his own good.” Interests, he argues, are the lifeblood of the social contract.15 It is in fact in part on these modern, Lockean grounds that the Anti-Federalists oppose the proposed constitution’s supremacy clause, demand a bill of rights, and oppose Congress’ control of the purse strings and the sword. The Anti-Federalists’ Lockeanism is, one might add, why the Federalists were able to win many of them over with the promise of a Bill of Rights. There is likewise a significant reliance of the Anti-Federalists on the transformative power of commerce—an argument that had been advanced most forcefully in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. The Federalists ask what, if not a common power, would keep the states together, and the Anti-Federalists’ answer is: commerce, which removes the need a strong federal government.16 As we will see, the Federalists will put still more weight on commerce as an integral part of the regime, but the argument concerning the transformative power of commerce is not absent from the Anti-Federalists. They likewise express concerns about the proposed constitution’s effect on free trade, and the underlying assumption

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concerning the need for such trade: the securing by each of his own interest.17 Finally, when Brutus calls for the rejection of the appeal to national glory as of a siren song away from virtue, he suggests that what he means by virtue is that which comes with commerce: softness.18 Yet side-by-side with this modern, Lockean/Montesquieuean liberalism is a demand by the Anti-Federalists for certain principles of classical republicanism and a corresponding demand that the new regime represent and balance the three permanent classes or orders of men articulated by Adams. These demands are part of a complex and comprehensive argument whose details we must omit but whose broad outlines can be limned as follows. In a pure democracy, they argue, the people must come together to deliberate and decide, and in a free republic their representatives must do so. But for such representation to work, a republic needs homogeneity of mores, with citizens whose customs and manners can be known and trusted, and the American states, diverse or heterogeneous, cannot sustain such mores as a single state.19 In thus arguing for homogeneity of mores in each state, we note, the Anti-Federalist intend the very opposite of what one finds in Turgot. They intend by it not a universal or cosmopolitan, commericially-induced homogeneity, but homogeneity within each state, owing to each state’s self-rule and its promotion of republican virtue. So, for example, in his Letter IX Agrippa rails against turning immigration decisions over to the federal government as something destructive of selfrule and, potentially, of religion, good morals, and virtue: Pennsylvania has chosen to receive all that would come there. Let any indifferent person judge whether that state in point of morals, education, energy is equal to any of the eastern states; the small state of Rhode-Island only excepted. Pennsylvania in the course of a century has acquired her present extent and population at the expense of religion and good morals. The eastern states have, by keeping separate from the foreign mixtures, acquired their present greatness in the course of a century and an half, and have preserved their religion and morals. They have also preserved that manly virtue which is equally fitted for rendering them respectable in war, and industrious in peace.20

Concern for republican virtue in individual states also leads the AntiFederalists to oppose the “consolidation” of all the states under a single, strong federal government. “A free republic,” says Brutus, citing Montesquieu, “cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent,” and “history furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States.” For in a large, unified nation such as the Federalists envision (and which the supremacy clause of Article 6 will bring about) citizenship, and the opportunity for civic virtue that it

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provides, will be lost. The citizens of a small, free republic know their fellow citizens, as habitually good or bad or middling human beings; they love their country, their government, and their laws; since they know their representatives and the representatives are responsible to them for their conduct, they grant the government and laws their confidence, respect, and affection. A large republic on the other hand, will have too few and hence too unknown representatives, and the people will hence have no confidence in the legislature and harbor suspicion of ambitious views. A large republic will therefore need a standing army to execute its laws made by men who are strangers to the people—an army that will not only violate citizen rights but will destroy civic virtue by dint of being a separate body distinct form the people and with different mores.21 The officers of its government will use their power to gratify their own interests and ambitions. It will, in short, quickly become a despotism.22 As Agrippa adds, the federal courts will try everyone in accord with federal laws; citizens will be tried by jurors who do not know them,23 and as Brutus and the Federal Farmer predict, judicial review of state laws in the name of “equity” will humble state courts, destroying their dignity.24 These oft-noted Anti-Federalists’ concerns for elements of a classical or pre-modern republicanism of virtuous self-rule are suffused with a less often noted dependence on Adams’ understanding of different classes or orders of men, causing the arguments to take on a quite different (and somewhat alarmist) tone. As the Federal Farmer puts it in the opening of Letter III, by the need for confidence in and respect for the laws he means a confidence that will induce what he calls “the sensible and virtuous part of the community to declare in favor of the laws, and to support them without an expensive military force.” And by “the virtuous part” of the community he, like other Anti-Federalists, means the people, the yeomanry, the “men of middling property.”25 Over and against this group, he argues, is set up, especially in the South, a “dissipated aristocracy” (45), whose members hold slaves.26 Brutus, too, citing the proposed constitution’s 3/5ths clause, condemns the slaveholding aristocracy that holds men in bondage “in defiance of every idea of benevolence, justice, and religion, and contrary to all the principles of liberty.”27 He calls the members of this Southern aristocracy “unfeeling, unprincipled, barbarous, and avaricious wretches.” But even the non-dissipated, “natural aristocracy” in all states poses a serious problem, according to the AntiFederalists. Their interests and sentiments, as the Federal Farmer puts it, are not those of the people.28 This would be less of a problem, the Federal Farmer argues, were not the part of the constitutional arrangement that is supposed to be the

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“democratic” branch, the House of Representatives, destined to be filled with the members of the natural aristocracy.29 As the Federal Farmer suggests, under the “pretense” of different branches of the legislature, the members will in fact be chosen from the same general description of citizens, that is, the aristocratic and monarchic.30 Indeed, “aristocratical” men have seized the occasion afforded by the need to make a few amendments to the Articles of Confederation, in order to propose a new constitution with a “strong tendency to aristocracy.”31 The internal police powers of the country are to be put into their hands, and since the aristocratic part of the community is disproportionately represented over the democratic part, it will stay there. In short, the Anti-Federalists find in the powers delegated to the branches, and in the mode of selection of office, a nefarious tendency to favor aristocracy over the people or the “democratic” order of men. The constitution does not sufficiently represent the interests, sentiments, opinions, or activities of the honest, less ambitious or more virtuous yeomanry.32 The proposed constitution will give too much opportunity to members of the natural aristocracy to pursue their ambitions, and given the selfish character of human nature, the aristocracy will use the opportunity to oppress the people and will turn obedience to laws into a thing obtained only by force or coercion. And even if it doesn’t, there will be a difficulty: the people are virtuous, and must be kept so by having responsibility—not the means to satisfy great ambition, but the means to responsible republican participation.33 This problem is exacerbated, in the eyes of the Anti-Federalists, by a number of other considerations. The slave-holding aristocracy of the South has an altogether different character from the North. In a few years, there will likely be an attempt at separation. Furthermore, the Senate and the Executive branches are too closely united to permit the executive to check the self-interested and ambitious Senators from oppressing the “democratic” branch, that is, the House; there are “no checks.”34 The state governments are where representation of the yeomanry class could take place, and a solution even at the Federal level is possible, in the eyes of some of the Anti-Federalists, through an increase in the number of representatives and, in the meantime, a 2/3rds or even 3/4ths majority consent mandated on each vote, which would give the small number of yeoman farmers an effective veto power. But in the absence of this, the states need to be permitted to retain more power than the proposed constitution will permit. Finally, there is no bill of rights. It is needed, according to the Federal Farmer, because while the various states have

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bills of rights, the supremacy clause will render these nugatory, as does the necessary and proper clause of Article I, sec. 8.35 Standing accused of a vast aristocratic conspiracy is not an enviable rhetorical position for anyone. The Federalists managed, however, not only to answer these charges and concerns of the Anti-Federalists, but to do so by laying out an understanding of the modern science of politics, and especially of representation, that is much closer to that of Turgot than to that of the Anti-Federalists and Adams. Three significant parts of their case concern us: the commercial republic, the novel, Lockean conception and parts of the modern republic, and consolidation of the states.

The Federalists’ Commercial Republic That the Federalists would adopt in a more thoroughgoing fashion than had the Anti-Federalists the argument for a commercial republic is not apparent from the outset. Hamilton’s opening arguments tend, after all, in the opposite direction. Attacking the Anti-Federalists’ claims about the pacifying nature of commerce as seductive utopian reveries, Hamilton delivers a famous jeremiad, in Federalist 6, on the permanent causes of war within states.36 But this argument quickly gives way to a recognition of and indeed hope in the pacifying powers of commerce. In fact, in both Federalist 7 and 8 Hamilton actually adopts key aspects of the Montesquieuean argument for the transformative power of the new, modern commercial republic. Even when, for example, he speaks of the “competitions of commerce” (62 bottom–63 top), he is moved to note that “the spirit of enterprise” which “characterizes the commercial part of America” would be disinclined to respect any regulations that one American state might wish to impose on another. He enlists, that is, the dynamic of commerce toward internationalism over and against the movement toward individual state sovereignty. And when responding in Federalist 8 to the question of why standing armies did not spring up in the smaller republics of antiquity, he appeals directly to the very Montesquieuean arguments about modern commercial republics that were being made by the Anti-Federalists: “The industrious habits of the people of the present day,” he argues, “absorbed in the pursuits of gain and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was,” he adds, significantly, “the true condition of the people of those [ancient] republics” —the ones he had earlier misleadingly called commercial republics (68 bottom–69, emphasis added). In their commercial activity, and experiencing that activity’s effect on warfare, the modern republics

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differ significantly from the ancient, producing professional armies distinct from the commercially-absorbed citizenry.37 In fact, in modern republics happily situated in isolation from other nations, “the citizens, not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; they view them with a spirit of jealous acquiescence in a necessary evil and stand ready to resist a power which they suppose may be exerted to the prejudice of their rights” (69, emphasis added). These passages manifest acceptance of the case for the pacifying, rationalizing effect of commerce—of its practitioners’ tendency to enjoy deal-making rather than admiring courageous, soldiery devotion. But the Federalists’ full argument for the commercial republic appears in Papers 9 through 14, and shows how much the new commercial republic and its spirit is at odds with, and even directed against, the Anti-Federalists’ arguments concerning permanent classes of men. Federalist 9 addresses the “new science of politics” (72) in its superiority to ancient practice, which, Hamilton argues, had been deadly to the longevity of republics and all “free government,” owing to “domestic faction and insurrection.” The new science of politics’ key features are distribution of power, departments, checks, balances, an independent judiciary, and representation. These, Hamilton stresses, are all modern discoveries. But the most recent or novel of them is the “enlargement of the orbit” of government (73), which will help suppress faction and increase security against external threats. Hamilton here relies directly on Montesquieu, the alleged guide of some of the Anti-Federalists; he quotes Montesquieu at length (Spirit of the Laws, I.IX.1) to show that he supports a “confederate republic” (in truth, a confederacy of republics) as capable of “extending the sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism” (74). Federalist 10 famously elaborates on this argument concerning control of factions by extension of the sphere of popular government. And as Martin Diamond has argued in his magisterial interpretation of that paper, its key concepts are the identification of the three causes of faction (passion, interests, opinions) and the need to avoid majority faction, of a zealously political or religious type, by enlisting and regulating the most pacific of these causes against the others: multiplying the number of economic, commercial interests through a large-scale republic.38 Federalist 12’s argument is still more emphatic on the central role of commerce in modern political science. The new, commercial republic rewards each for his toils because labor and enterprise, especially with the introduction of money or precious metals, are the source of wealth, as Hamilton argues with great spirit in the paper’s opening:

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Chapter Eleven The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares. By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate all the channels of industry and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness. The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer—all orders of men look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils…It has been found in various countries that in proportion as commerce has flourished land has risen in value.39

While Hamilton’s Lockean praise of enterprise-promoting money is telling, equally important is what the commercial republic is here said to mean concerning the “orders of men.” Adams’ three orders or classes are quietly replaced by “merchants, laborers in industry, active mechanic, industrious manufacturer.” Everyone, that is, is working—for money; there is no leisured aristocratic nor monarchic class in this new republic. And each “order” is defined by its job classification. Shifting coalitions of economic interests replace what Adams had considered permanent classes. Hamilton likewise makes clear the fundamentally Lockean or modern liberal nature of such a republic when he asserts the need for a federal government that extends authority and agency of the Union not to states but to citizens (cf. Federalist 16, p. 116); laws are intended for individual citizens, not states, and must carry sanctions; the federal government needs the power to coerce citizens (110). For the “true springs” of human conduct are self-interested passions (110, bottom). Government is formed originally because we fear others. It is formed to constrain men from harming each other. For this purpose, it needs the power to coerce. Still, there is no reason to fear, as the Anti-Federalists argue, that a federal government that brings its agency to the persons of the citizens in this way will be too powerful, leaving the states without dignity. For the federal government will be occupied with commerce, finance, negotiation, and war, leaving the authority over private justice between citizens of the same state, supervision of agriculture, and so on, to the individual states. Finally, the federal government is to be in the hands of representatives of the people (Federalist 28, p. 180). If those representatives betray the trust given them, we revert to the original right of self-defense, that is, of revolution (as Locke famously argued), which we can the better exercise in a large territory than in a small state. But in addition to spelling out in this way the modern, Lockean, interest-based (and anti-class-based) nature of the commercial republic—

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that is, in addition to appealing to the modern side of the Anti-Federalists’ arguments against their classical side—Hamilton saw a need for a direct response to their charge of scheming to produce an aristocracy through a constitution that would allow the aristoi to usurp all authority. His response avoids discussion of “aristocratical men” and the power they will allegedly accumulate. Instead, he declares in Federalist 31 (p. 196) that “[a]ll observations founded on the danger of usurpation ought to be referred to the composition and structure of the government, not the nature or extent of its powers.” He and Madison thereafter go on to explain the structure of government as mandated by the new constitution, that is, the separate powers assigned to each branch, the checks and balances, and the terms of office. Everything beyond delimiting the powers of government, Hamilton declares or admits, will have to be left “to the prudence and firmness of the people…to preserve the constitutional equilibrium.” But Hamilton makes as clear as possible that that equilibrium he has in mind is not at all one of “classes” or “orders of men.” He directly addresses the Anti-Federalists’ central, repeated concerns about representation—their concern, as he summarizes it, that “the House of Representatives is not sufficiently numerous for the reception of all the different classes of citizens in order to combine the interests and feelings of every part of the community, and to produce a true sympathy between the representative body and its constituents.” This argument takes, Hamilton complains, “a very specious and seducing form”—that is, it calls its audience of yeoman farmers virtuous while calling others a grasping, vicious group (214). To it, Hamilton replies by setting aside the question of the maximal number of representatives, in order to address this more important question of classes, the representation of which he calls “impracticable and unnecessary.” It is impracticable or even “visionary” because in fact each and every occupation constitutes a “class”: mechanics, manufacturers or artisans, merchants, members of the learned professions, and the “landed interest,” the last of whom include men from the tiniest land owners to the possessors of great estates. As Hamilton concludes (in Federalist 35, p. 216), the context of this discussion is, for him, the very sober and practical one of taxes, of political economy. There are, he argues, two things with which “the person”—not a cabal of interested aristocrats, nor a group of virtuous people, but one single human being, thinking by herself or himself—in whose hands the exercise of the power of taxation should be acquainted. The first is the general genius, habits, and modes of thinking of the people at large. The second is the resources of the country. “And this is all that can be reasonably meant,” he states emphatically, “by a knowledge of the interests and feelings of the people. In any other sense

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the proposition has either no meaning, or an absurd one.” Where the AntiFederalists had spoken of the “people” as an order or class, with its particular interests and feelings and indeed virtues distinct from those of the natural aristocratic types, Hamilton speaks pointedly of “the people at large” and of understanding their habits, genius, etc. The Anti-Federalists’ class-based use of the term, he suggests, “has no meaning.” (Madison speaks similarly in Federalist 57 of “the great body of the people”—p. 351.) There is, as Turgot had argued, no aristocracy in America, and hence no non-aristocratic class or order called “the people.” And as Madison will not fail to point out (in Federalist 39), the constitution contains an absolute prohibition of titles of nobility. But how is one to understand this union of everyone, of which Hamilton speaks? He clearly does not mean that all belong to the class of the people that the Anti-Federalists dub “virtuous.” Rather, as the balance of Federalist 35 indicates, all are to be understood as self-interested, and treating them as self-interested will, for all intents and purposes, soon make all class distinctions politically irrelevant. At first Hamilton suggests (in the 5th paragraph of Federalist 35, p. 214) that the attempt to represent the interests and feelings of each class is impractical or visionary because each and every occupation constitutes a separate class; interests are that particular, not common or shared in the way a visionary would hope. But then a second argument emerges, one that suggests what will happen to individuals in practice: Hamilton begins to join the occupations into broader groups, united by the possibility of mutual or coordinate interests: mechanics, or tradesmen and professionals, constituting the “mechanic and manufacturing arts,” merchants, the “learned professions,” and “the landed interest” consisting of land workers big and small. Should each, he then asks, have by law some of their own number represented, in a proportional class representative scheme or legally assured equality of result? This, he asserts, would destroy freedom (9th paragraph of Federalist 35, p. 215). Better to count on the interests of each, of landowners and merchants, being jealously guarded by each. There is, moreover, something provincial about those middling farmers whose virtue is being boastfully proclaimed by the Anti-Federalists. Their observations don’t extend much beyond neighbors and acquaintances. They are just folks, or worse, country bumpkins. But just as the mechanics and manufacturers will give their vote to the merchant, so these farmers may give their vote to the men of the learned professions. And by dint of that political support, those learned men will be bound to the interests and feelings of the farmers, and have to obey the same laws they ask the farmers to obey. It will that is be in the interests of the learned to serve their constituents, the farmers (216). Such

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are the true and strong chords of sympathy between representatives and constituents. The whole system of representation rests on interests, jealously guarded, and it will force every group to compromise rationally in pursuit of those interests.

The Federalists’ Novel Representative Scheme But if a key feature of the modern commercial republic’s ability to multiply interests and prevent majority faction through such alliances is an increase in the size of the republic, then the Federalists must also respond to the Anti-Federalists’ concern that this increase will result in the withering away of republican self-government in the various states, through a “consolidation” of the states. Madison raises a version of this very concern in Federalist 14: won’t so large a federation as the new constitution proposes be impossible to administer? Those who say so, he answers, confuse a republic with a democracy. What we aim for is government by representation, not by all citizens. He appeals, then, to the Anti-Federalists’ own definition of a republic as a representative democracy. But he then also owns (as Hamilton had not) that the largescale republic called for by the new constitution is indeed a completely new scheme: [E]ven in modern Europe, to which we owe the great principle of representation, no example is seen of a government wholly popular and founded, at the same time, wholly on that principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering this great mechanical power in government, … America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive republics” (100-01).

In making this admission Madison also insists that the new constitution will not produce a “mixed” regime of monarchy and democracy. It will rather produce a regime based on popular sovereignty. Far from being a mixture of age-old orders or classes, the extended republic is an altogether new thing, an “experiment,” as Madison calls it (104). And as an experiment, it is befitting Americans, who do not venerate the old but whose way is, rather, to innovate. Madison elaborates on the novelty of the constitution in Federalist 37, stating that the biggest problem facing the convention was precisely that something altogether new was called for: we had to give energy to a national government while preserving republicanism (6th paragraph, p. 226), to combine stability and energy, on one hand, with liberty and the republican form, on the other. This is indeed a new task (227-28). The

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novelty means, he admits, that we do not even quite have the vocabulary yet for it: the use of words like “republican,” “representation,” and “separation of powers” needs to be re-thought (10th paragraph, p. 229). The argument for their novelty stands, again, against Adams’ understanding of these terms and that of his Anti-Federalist followers.40 We are of course familiar with the key features of the new, modern republicanism that Madison next spells out: sovereignty of the people, having representatives dependent on the people with short terms of office, separating the power in a number of hands (Federalist 47), and moderation of strict separation, by checks and balances. But in Federalist 48 Madison elaborates upon the latter, explaining how to prevent the three branches from encroaching on one another, and begins another crucial part of his argument against the Anti-Federalists. They had expressed concern about the Senate joining forces with the president, but the chief encroacher, Madison insists (end of 3rd paragraph, p. 309) is actually the legislature: “the legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its authority and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” Those who in the past have set up legislatures prudently feared hereditary monarchy and the House of Lords. But equally dangerous is the legislature, “inspired by a supposed influence over the people with an intrepid confidence in its own strength.” Passions and ambitions will be found there, especially since its extent is not clear, and it has the enormous power of the purse, making the other two branches dependent on it.41 In the course of making this argument Madison attacks Adams’ understanding: we do not, he explains, have a monarchic branch; we have an executive magistracy, carefully limited in extent and in duration of power. He grants, however, that members of the legislature, numerous and dwelling among the people at large, will also be connected by blood and friendship with “the most influential part of society,” the leading men “on whom,” he owns, “everything depends in such bodies” (316), “persons of distinguished character and influence in the community” (317). He abstains from the words “natural aristocracy,” but leaves no doubt that he agrees with Adams and the Anti-Federalists’ contention that there will be such influential and ambitious men as he has in mind. He mentions them, however, only to imply that the constitution will control their ambitions by limiting and directing their outlet. In Federalist 51, the means to that control, the very principle of the government’s structure, is disclosed. “To what expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is that as all … exterior provisions are found to

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be inadequate the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places” (p. 320, emphasis added). What this means is, in the first place, a deviation from strict adherence to the popular will; the judiciary is to be made independent of the legislature by its permanent tenure. But the great security (spelled out on 321–322) is, as Madison famously puts it, “giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others… Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Here the great Lockean principle of relying on each man’s self-interest and ambition to check that of other men by dint of institutional arrangements is spelled out with greater frankness than even Hamilton had used—so much frankness, in fact, as others have noted, that Madison feels compelled to apologize for it (322). The practical implementation of this principle is in the first place the division of the legislature, which would otherwise be too strong vis à vis the other two branches. Madison here makes it abundantly clear that he does not conceive of the legislature as divided into an aristocratic and a democratic part, or as designed to represent allegedly permanent classes. It is, rather divided so that ambition counteracts ambition—the same end as is aimed at by granting the veto to the executive branch (6th paragraph, 323, “But it is not…”).42 This principle further informs and re-defines the nature of the split between the state governments and the national government. It is not a matter of preserving small, virtuous republics in a large confederation, but of having two spheres of government selfishly, ambitiously fighting it out and thereby controlling one another. Finally, Madison calls once again for divisions within society itself, to prevent “majority faction” (10th paragraph), something the Anti-Federalists never talk about because they would see a certain version of it as a positive good. The implicit attack on Adams’ and the Anti-Federalists’ understanding of representation continues in Federalist 52, where Madison addresses the new constitution’s provisions for the House of Representatives, discussing the qualifications of electors (voters) and of the successful candidates for office. Suffrage, he argues, as he has from the start, is “a fundamental article of republican government” (326, second paragraph). Again, not three classes equally represented, as Adams and the Anti-Federalists had argued, but popular sovereignty retained by voting, is the mark of free government. One branch, though, or a part of it, ought to be dependent on the people alone: the House of Representatives. “The door of this part of

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the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth or any particular profession of religious faith.” The term of office is short, owing to the need for immediate dependence on and intimate sympathy with the people. Yet the House has only a part of the supreme legislative authority, not the whole of it (9th paragraph, 329). So there is no need to fear that two years is too long. And the various state legislatures will check the federal legislature. Moreover, as Madison stresses in Federalist 53, the federal legislature will be under the Constitution, which is not alterable by the government (as the British constitution is). But in the course of this explanation of the utility of two-year terms Madison makes an important admission. In addition to “an upright intention,” he first argues, a legislature needs not a knowledge of the feelings and opinions of constituents, but a knowledge of subjects of legislation, which can be attained only by experience on the job (4th paragraph, p. 332, “No man…”). This is especially so, Madison argues, with the extremely diverse interests and laws of the large country. Yet— and here is the important admission—this diversity will not last long anyway, he now predicts (in the 6th paragraph, p. 334). For with the formation of a federal code of law, the affairs of the Union will become more and more objects of curiosity and conversation among citizens at large. There will be as a result a homogeneity of laws, an increased mutual knowledge of the affairs of all states, and “a general assimilation of their manners and laws” (334), especially with a uniform commercial policy, as he indicates.43 What he is here describing is of course the very homogeneity that Turgot had in mind, and that the Anti-Federalists denounce as “consolidation” of the various state republics into a single, large society. It is, indeed, precisely what the Federalists expect to occur, and unlike Hamilton, Madison comes clean on this as a goal. Equally significant is the fact that Madison here again grants the AntiFederalists’ claim that a few men will come to dominate in such a large republic (in the 9th paragraph, p. 335: “A few of the members…”). By frequent elections, the few with superior talents will dominate and become “masters of the public business.” That is, he seems again to admit that what the Anti-Federalists had called natural aristocrats will dominate. How, then, to allay their concerns on this score?

Modern Representation and Virtue In Federalist 55 (in the first paragraph, p. 341) Madison directly addresses the Anti-Federalists’ warnings that the House will become too

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aristocratic; he does so by turning to the question of the right number of representatives in the House. He begins by enumerating four concerns of the Anti-Federalists: a small number of representatives will be an unsafe depository of public interest; the representatives will lack knowledge of local circumstances of their constituents; representatives will come from the few and will accordingly lack sympathetic feelings with the mass of the people; this situation will get worse as the population grows. And he admits that finding the right number of representatives is a difficult problem: the number must be large enough for free consultation and discussion without too easy a combination for improper purposes. But also, second, it must be small enough “to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. Passion wrests the scepter from reason in too large an assembly.” That is precisely why we need representation. Far from being the virtuous guardians of the common good, that is, the people assembled, the multitude, is a dangerous, because passionate, force in political life. But having re-iterated in this way the danger found in the legislative branch, Madison now turns the tables on the Anti-Federalists, and we start to see how and why they suffered defeat. The Anti-Federalists had spoken of the need to have the interests of the ambitious few checked. Madison asks (in the seventh paragraph of Federalist 55, p. 344): will all these virtuous people of whom the Anti-Federalists speak elect, then, every second year 65 or 100 men to the House who are disposed to tyranny and treachery? This isn’t visible right now, he slyly observes, in the state legislatures. But what of the Anti-Federalists’ claim that the President and the Senate will combine to oppress the democratical House? It is highly improbable, agues Madison (in the 9th paragraph), that so mercenary and perfidious a combination will arise. For the two branches stand on as different respective foundations as republican government will allow. That is, if you want to have them genuinely separated completely, then you’d have to have an independent, landed aristocracy, and a royal house. Madison points out that this—which would genuinely sustain the three classes spoken of by Adams and the Anti-Federalists—would be not a republican government, but a “mixed regime.” Finally, the AntiFederalists’ suspicions of the ambitions of office holders are destructive of the principle of republican government. The Anti-Federalists must have some degree of esteem and confidence in their representatives, or they will have to admit that free government is impossible, that no one is to be trusted, that “there is not sufficient virtue among men for selfgovernment.” The Anti-Federalists overreached, we can say, with their Lockean suspicions, and now Madison can take them to task for it on their

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own non-Lockean ground of virtue. But he does so while simultaneously pointing out that the federal government won’t presume virtue in its representatives, but will presume its opposite—the federal government will have checks. It appears, then, to be the result of a cautious but not cynical constitutionalism. It appears moderate, this syncretic experiment in large-scale republicanism. Finally, in Federalist 57 Madison addresses directly the third of the concerns of the Anti-Federalists that had been spelled out at the start of Federalist 55: that the House will be comprised of aristoi who will aggrandize themselves. He re-iterates here (in the third paragraph, on p. 350) the cautious trustfulness of the Constitution. He then argues that even the ignorant will have a voice in elections—that we are counting on “the great body of the people”—and that anyone with sufficient merit will be elected. He simultaneously defends the effect of the universal sense of honor as conducive to virtue, to “grateful and benevolent nature” (in paragraph 9, p. 351). But, he owns, we will not simply rely on such things; we will rely on frequent elections, and the fact that members of the House will themselves be under the rule of laws that they make. This, then, remains the key to the new constitution: the strongest bond of sympathy between the people and the rulers/legislators is common interest. But Madison adds that there is indeed a need for “a vigilant and manly spirit in the people.” Having spelled out the structure of a commercial, liberal republic based on self-interest checking self-interest, one that will soon yield a homogeneity of mores under federal law, Madison appeals, remarkably, to the Anti-Federalists’ oft-repeated hope in the manly virtue of a republican citizenry. It was an appeal sufficient to win the day.

Rousseau, the Rise of the Left, and Postmodernism The very victory of the Federalists, coming as it did through a combination of spelling out the new Lockean/Montesquieuan science of politics and appeals to virtue and trust, and concessions on a bill of rights, augured well for the gradual transition from classical to modern republicanism that was taking place in the new republic. The founding benefitted, in other words, from the deep optimism that obtained in the mid- to late-18th century about the new science of politics. The “administration” of things that the Federalist hoped would replace the animated political life of the past44 could, it seemed to a sufficient number of Americans, exist at the national level without disturbing the classical republican rule that would persist within states. But this optimism soon gave way to the formation of political parties, headed by Adams and

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Jefferson. These early parties (Federalist and Democratic-Republican), while forged within the particular historical circumstances of American history—especially the horrific continuation of chattel slavery—were harbingers of a political division that came to obtain within modern liberal democracies everywhere, a division based on a radical questioning of the arguments and assumptions made by theoreticians and practitioners of the modern science of politics. For the path of modernity changed quite dramatically in the 19th century, as the successful enlightenment commercialism of Locke, Montesquieu and Turgot began to encounter something unexpected: Rousseau’s critique of its “bourgeois” life. In the wake of that critique, a new kind of political division, an ideological division, took hold within modern, commercial republics. The moderns came now to face a rejection of the commercial republic, and a stirred longing for a (modified) return of the fraternity and call to virtue of ancient republicanism. The depth of that longing may be gauged by noting that it was given expression by none other than Montesquieu himself. He more than anyone had been responsible for convincing the West of the desirability of homogenizing all human mores and laws through commerce. But even he wrote with a visible sadness about the arrival of that homogeneity and commercial activity. He looked back to the small Greek and Roman republics and their virtue with admiration: “When that virtue was in full force,” he said, “things were done in those governments that we no longer see, and that astonish our small souls.”45 This statement clearly resonated with Rousseau, who gave the sentiment of disgust with the commercially homogenized modern soul and admiration for the ancient republic much fuller expression, turning it into a thoroughgoing critique of Montesquieu’s whole project. For the attempt to make human beings aware of their rights, to show how the private interests of individuals could become the sentinels over public rights, the attempt to guide human life toward the safety and comforts that commerce made possible, so that a new kind of urbane, cosmopolitan, rational life would emerge, was the subject of Rousseau’s powerful critique. That critique was the more effective in that it was made with a view to the future as more progressive, more able to include an egalitarian citizenship that offered all that had been lost in the early modern rejection of classical republican citizenship. If at the time of the American founding the Anti-Federalists could embrace modernity, commerce, and the new science of politics with a sustained hope of preserving within each state traditional mores, religion, and classes, such hopefulness was absent from the politics guided by the teachings of Rousseau and his followers, who viewed the commercial

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republic as fundamentally mistaken. We know their critique above all through Marx, but that the commercial republic was facing a serious crisis of confidence was already clear as early as 1816. That was the year that Benjamin Constant, Montesquieu’s great student, published his defense of modern liberty, commerce, and homogeneity made over and against the ancient notion of republican liberty and virtue, resurgent owing to the Rousseauean call to devotion to fatherland and virtue. In the midst of that defense Constant was moved to echo his teacher’s statement of regret for what had been lost in the rise of the modern republic: One could not read the beautiful pages of antiquity, one could not recall the actions of its great men, without feeling an indefinable and special emotion, which nothing modern can possibly arouse. The old elements of a nature, one could almost say, earlier than our own, seem to awaken in us in the face of these memories. It is difficult not to regret the loss of a time when the faculties of man developed … in so wide a career, so strong in their own powers, with such a feeling of energy and dignity. Once we abandon ourselves to this regret, it is impossible not to wish to emulate what we regret.46

Given the powerful pull of this regret even and precisely on such a proponent of the homogeneous commercial republic, one can well understand the appeal of the promise made by Rousseau and his progeny to fulfill, through a different politics, the longings that lay behind that regret. The divide between left and right introduced by Rousseau continues, of course, to animate political life within modern liberal democracies. But a new wave of thought, postmodernism, has recently come to direct the left and to deepen the party divisions within modern liberal regimes. For while the Rousseauean left had always maintained an admiration for rationalism and science (if not always for Enlightenment), the postmodern left, emerging out of the uneasy combination of Marx and Heidegger, has attacked the universalism and alleged truth of science in the name of the particular, the local, the contingent. Its watchword is diversity, and it takes direct aim at the homogeneity favored by Montesquieu, Turgot, and their fellow Enlighteners, and at the technologically driven “globalism” by which that homogeneity is brought about. Yet the diversity at which its proponents within liberal democracies aim tends to be that of individuals, not peoples or nations, and so it tends to take the form of liberation movements and identity politics (women’s rights, gay rights, transgendered rights, undocumented migrants’ rights, etc.) which, if successful, would produce states and nations that are, after all, the same. The “communities” of which it speaks tend, for the same reason, to be the thin communities of

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“preference” rather than the thick communities of mutual devotion that produce national differences. Its causes and political demands tend therefore to be easily supported by libertarians and globalists. If, as we have seen, the Anti-Federalists, under the influence of Adams, had offered a genuine and viable (if incoherent) alternative to the modern rationalism of Locke, Montesqueiu, and Turgot, the postmodern left that one finds in liberal democracies continues to move, despite its alleged opposition to modern rationalism, in the individualist, apolitical, homogenizing direction sketched by Turgot over two centuries ago.

Notes 1

Excerpts from the letter appear in Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States in The Works of John Adams, Adams, Charles Francis, ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., Vol. 4. All parenthetical page references appearing in this section are to this edition. 2 Turgot wrote two Letters on Tolerance, the first in 1753 and the second in either 1754 or 1755, and Memoire to the King on Tolerance in 1775. For his indebtedness to Pierre Bayle on this subject, see Preston King, Tolerance (New York: Routledge, 1997), 100-102. 3 “When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it sacred…” (First Treatise, sec. 58). 4 Compare Locke’s First Treatise, sec. 45, where he asserts that an increase in personal property and the use of money is a cause for communities to settle the boundaries of their territories, and, by their own laws, regulate the property of private men of the community. 5 “The bourgeoisie, whenever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and that has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom— Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” The Communist Manifesto, in The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition, Richard Tuck, ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 475-76. 6 As we have seen, Turgot’s sense of justice is decisively formed by the Lockean doctrine of individual rights. Given Marx’s rejection of nature in favor of the dialectic of economic history, and given what he therefore argues, in On the Jewish

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Question, concerning the alienation from labor, from oneself, and so from others (and hence the selfishness) that lies behind and informs the doctrine of individual rights and the liberal state that rests on that doctrine, it is unlikely that he would be at all inclined to view Turgot’s intention or its outcome as in any way just. Turgot for his part not only enacted economic policies in favor of the poor when he was Intendant of Limoges (1761-74), but even freely gave away his own money to help feed the poor during the famine of 1770-71. For more on his justice and mercifulness, see A Sketch of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, With A Translation of his Letter to Dr. Price, by James Munson Barnard (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1899). 7 Consider in this light de Tocqueville’s summarizing comparison and contrast between the aims and inclinations of life in the old regime and life in the newly emerging liberal democracies: “…if, finally, the principal object of a government, according to you, is not to give the most force or the most glory possible to the entire body of the nation, but to procure the most well-being for each of the individuals who compose it and to have each avoid the most misery, then equalize conditions and constitute the government of a democracy.” Democracy in America, Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, translators and editors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), Volume I, part ii, ch.6, p. 235. Consider also Thomas Pangle’s presentation of Nietzsche’s critique of the human type thus fostered in The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 81-82. 8 Adams himself was aware of this position vis à vis other founders. Consider for example his letter of July 3, 1776, to Abigail Adams (in Colonies To Nation: A Documentary History of the American Revolution, edited by Jack P. Greene [New York: Norton, 1975]) in which he tells his wife that it is “the will of Heaven” that America and Britain should be sundered forever, that the coming “furnace of affliction” will “inspire us with many virtues” that we now lack and may bring a needed “purification from our vices,” and in which he looks forward to future Independence Day celebrations that will “be commemorated” not only with fireworks and games and parades but “as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.” Consider also his “Thoughts on Government” (ibid, 306-311). It begins by declaring best what any liberal of the time might declare best, “the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons” (ibid, 307). But having brought in arguments concerning human dignity, patience, humility, moderation, honor, and wisdom, Adams is soon speaking instead of a society’s happiness as found in “ease, its safety, its freedom” (ibid, 309, emphasis added). Finally, having brought in the need to attend, in the governance of a free people, to “the dignity and stability of government in all its branches,” “the morals of the people,” the liberal education of youth, sumptuary laws (“the very mention of which,” he declares, “will excite a smile”—310), “great, manly, and warlike virtues,” and “elevation of sentiment,” concludes by speaking of “the happiest governments and the best character of a great people” (ibid, 311, emphasis added). 9 Adams excerpts a portion of Thucydides’ description of the Corcyrean civil strife (3.81–82), but upon reaching Thucydides’ statement that “such things will ever

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be…so long as human nature continues the same,” he interrupts the quotation to say: “But if this nervous historian had known a balance of three powers, he would not have pronounced the distemper so incurable, but would have added ––so long as parties in cities remain unbalanced.” Adams, Defense, Vol. 4, 285. 10 See note 2, above. 11 Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, “Religion.” Published in Thomas Jefferson, Selected Writings, Harvey C. Mansfield, editor (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlon Davidson, 1979), 46-50. 12 Letter to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826. Published in Thomas Jefferson, Selected Writings, Harvey C. Mansfield, editor (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlon Davidson, 1979), 12-13. 13 Adams, 298. Contrast Jefferson’s stance toward pre-modern political science, especially owing to the modern principle of representation, in his Letter to Isaac Tiffany, 26 August 1815.: “The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government: and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, of the political writings of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us.” 14 See for example the argument of the Federal Farmer in The Anti-Federalist, Herbert Storing, editor, selected by Murray Dry (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 39-41; 56, 69, 70 top, 84 middle; for the argument of Brutus, see Essay 2, in The Anti-Federalist, pp. 117-120; for that of Agrippa, ibid., 241, top, and 243; for that of The Impartial Examiner, see ibid, 278-79, 280. Compare Federalist 51, The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, editor (New York: Penguin Classics, 1961), p. 127. 15 Compare Hamilton’s argument in Federalist 15: The “true springs” of human conduct are self-interested passions; government is formed originally because we fear others; it is formed to constrain men from harming each other (Mentor edition, 110 bottom). 16 Agrippa, Letter VIII, 25 Dec. 1787, The Anti-Federalist, 243-247. 17 Consider e.g., Agrippa, Letter VII, 14 Dec. 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 239. 18 Brutus, Essay VII, 3 January 1788, The Anti-Federalist, p. 146; see also Patrick Henry’s argument at pp. 298, 316, 320. Contrast the warnings of the Impartial Examiner against prosperity, voluptuousness, luxury, and fondness for riches, at The Anti-Federalist, pp. 290-91. 19 Brutus, Essay I, 18 October 1787, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 114-115. 20 Agrippa, Letter IX, 28 Dec. 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 245. 21 Brutus, Essay VIII, The Anti-Federalist, p. 152; cf. Essay X, p. 159, and see also the Impartial Examiner, February 27, 1788, p. 284. 22 Brutus, Essay I, 18 October 1787, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 113-117; Brutus cites Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws 1.8.16. See also Brutus, Essay IV (29 November 1787), pp. 130-131, the Pennsylvania Minority Report, pp. 219-220, and the argument of Agrippa, Letters IV to XI, pp. 234-52. 23 Agrippa, Letter V, 11 December 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 237.

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The Federal Farmer, Letter III, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 52-54; Brutus, Essay I, p. 112; Essay XV, pp.182-86. See also Patrick Henry, 9 June 1788, p. 324; the Pennsylvania Minority Report, pp. 212-213; and the Impartial Examiner, 27 February 1788, p. 285. 25 The Federal Farmer, Letter III, The Anti-Federalists, p. 43 with Letter V. pp. 62 and 63. 26 The Federal Farmer, Letter III, The Anti-Federalists, p. 45. 27 Brutus, Letter III (15 November 1787), The Anti-Federalist, p. 123. 28 The Federal Farmer, Letters IV, V, and VI, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 58 bottom, 62, and 67. The Federal Farmer’s understanding of what constitutes a member of the natural as opposed to artificial aristocracy is not fundamentally different from that of Adams or Jefferson. See Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to John Adams” (28 October 1813). 29 The Anti-Federalist, p. 44. See also the concurring arguments of The Federal Farmer (pp. 76-77), Brutus (pp. 125, 128-29), and the Impartial Examiner (p. 290). 30 The Federal Farmer, Letter V, October 13, 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 62, and Letter VII (31 Dec. 1787), The Anti-Federalist, p. 73-77. 31 The Federal Farmer, Letter I, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 36-37. 32 The Federal Farmer, Letter VII, The Anti-Federalist, p. 75. Patrick Henry also rails against the new constitution on these grounds: The Anti-Federalist, pp. 311 and 317. 33 See for example the arguments of Patrick Henry, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 322 and 324, with those of Centinel (p. 16), the Federal Farmer (p. 58), and Impartial Examiner (p. 285). 34 See also Patrick Henry’s arguments at The Anti-Federalist, 312 and 319. 35 The Federal Farmer, Letter III, October 10, 1787, The Anti-Federalist, pp. 4555. See also the argument of Agrippa a bill of rights in Letter VI, 14 Dec. 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 239. Brutus, on the other hand, along with the Pennsylvania Dissenting Minority Report on the Convention, and (for a time) Patrick Henry, thinks the proposed constitution is not at all favorable to free government, and cannot be corrected or usefully amended. He wants a confederated republic. The states “ought to retain a portion of their sovereignty,” as indeed they had under the Articles of Confederation. Brutus, Letter V, 13 Dec. 1787, The Anti-Federalist, p. 136, and the Pennsylvania Minority Report, The Anti-Federalist, p. 212. 36 Hamilton, Federalist 6, in The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, editor (New York, NY: Penguin classics, 1961), pp. 54-59. All subsequent parenthetical page references are to this edition. 37 “The means of revenue, which have been so greatly multiplied by the increase of gold and silver and of the arts of industry, and the science of finance, which is the offspring of modern times, concurring with the habits of nations, have produced an entire revolution in the system of war, and have rendered disciplined armies, distinct from the body of the citizens, the inseparable companion of frequent hostility.” 38 See Martin Diamond, “Ethics and Politics: The American Way,” in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Robert H. Horwitz, ed. (Charlottesville,

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VA: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 75–108. As Diamond notes, speaking emphatically of modern legislation and its focus on interests, Madison argues that “[t]he regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.” 39 Federalist Papers, 91-92, emphases added. 40 Madison alludes to the answer to these great problems, or the means they discovered to surmounting them, when speaking in Federalist 37 (on p. 230) of another peculiar difficulty, that of having so many interests at the convention (13th paragraph, “Nor could…”, p. 230). It is a strong reminder of the argument of Federalist 10. In fact, a bit later (in the 14th paragraph, on p. 230, “Would it be wonderful…”), Madison refers to the pious man’s understanding of the convention and its happy outcome. But this is clearly not Madison’s understanding; he himself offers a perfectly natural explanation for the outcome (in paragraph 15, p. 231): there was no party animosity, and those who opposed it saw the necessity of acting now in order to solve these problems. 41 It is noteworthy that Madison, having stressed the novelty of the new regime, goes out of his way in Federalist 49 to take a conservative position, on amending fundamental laws, citing the need for “that veneration which time bestows on everything” (314-315). This is a position that concurs with that of the AntiFederalists (see e.g., the argument of Centinel, p. 14 of The Anti-Federalist, and of Melancton Smith, 334-35; Patrick Henry, 296-97; Federal Farmer 32-37), and signals his readiness to launch arguments that accord with their understanding. 42 Similarly, in Federalist 70-72 Hamilton addresses the branch that Adams had called “monarchic,” the executive branch. He defends the powers of this branch by reference to the need for energy, and the safety of liberty— for “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch,” and single responsibility, especially in deliberations about war.42 He similarly defends the length of term by reference to the need for personal firmness in the executive, and stability of the system of administration, making no reference to any “monarchic” class or principle as the ground of the office. Moreover, in explaining the need for an admittedly anti-republican firmness in the executive, Hamilton draws again, in Federalist 71, from the Anti-Federalists’ own worry about ambitious men, but points to their need for followers among the people: the people can be seduced, flattered, by ambitious men and their use of the legislature’s potentially “imperious control” of the republic; the executive must then oppose them until they come to their senses. A longish term, without limits on the number of terms, will assist the “courage and magnanimity” of the president in this situation. Finally, in arguing against presidential term limits in Federalist 72, Hamilton speaks of the need to maintain the hope in the incumbent president that he can merit the office for a long time (p. 437; and see 438, “His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice”). 43 That is, in the 7th paragraph. Jay, too, had spoken favorably of the “systematical” —as opposed to differing— local laws and interests that would emerge from a single nation, in Federalist 3.

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See Hamilton’s use of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man in Federalist 68 (Rossiter ed., 413). 45 Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 4.4-6. 46 Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns,” in Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, translated and edited by Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 325.

PART FOUR: CONTEMPORARY REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATION OF CLASSICAL RATIONALISM TO MODERN DEMOCRACY, ECONOMICS, AND EDUCATION

CHAPTER TWELVE ON CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM AS A SOURCE FOR CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN PLURALISM1 KEVIN M. CHERRY

Ever since the razor-thin election of 2000 and its now-famous “redstate, blue-state” electoral map, American political commentators, and many political scientists, have focused on the problem of political polarization.2 In her first speech after conceding the election to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton lamented that “our nation is more deeply divided than we thought.” Trump himself acknowledged this fact in his victory speech, insisting “it is time for us to come together as one united people.” Ordinary Americans share this sense; Gallup recently announced that a record-high number of citizens see our nation as “greatly divided” about “the most important values.” Nor is this a problem unique to America: In Europe, parties on the left and right seem to be gaining power at the expense of centrists, as globalization has been met with calls (and votes) for increased autonomy. Pope Francis, too, recently decried the “virus of polarization and animosity” that characterizes much political and religious discourse around the world, and former secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, warned the 65th UN General Assembly that there is “a new politics at work—a politics of polarization,” exemplified by “the language of hate, false divisions between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ those who insist on ‘their way’ or ‘no way.’” One can easily overstate, as I fear many American political scientists have, the ideological dimensions of these divisions,3 but taken as a whole the evidence surely indicates a decrease in the cohesion of political communities, a problem that has concerned political theorists from Plato onward.

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In this chapter, I limn the works of Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon —“two of the chief Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century”4—for ways of thinking about these divisions within contemporary Christian contexts, focusing on each author’s Walgreen lectures at the University of Chicago. Simon’s lectures, given in January and early February of 1948, became Philosophy of Democratic Government (originally published in 1951); Maritain’s lectures, given in December 1949, became Man and the State (also 1951). 5 Both of these works were relatively late in each author’s career and reflect his mature reflections on the problems of political philosophy.6 More important, both authors draw on “classically rational” sources for their thinking about pluralism, claiming especially an Aristotelian influence.7 In what follows, I trace their use of Aristotle in developing a defense of pluralism and argue that whereas Maritain’s theological and philosophical pluralism better describes our contemporary world, Simon’s structural pluralism helps us better respond to that pluralism.

Christian Pluralism and Classical Political Rationalism Maritain and Simon clearly present themselves as part of the classical tradition, indebted primarily to Thomas Aquinas and the man St. Thomas identified as “The Philosopher,” Aristotle. Kuic repeatedly refers to Simon’s work as reflecting “the Aristotelian-Thomistic” tradition (1999, 12), just as Schall states that Maritain’s thought reflected “the order that came to be argued in Aristotle and especially Aquinas” (1998, xvii). Indeed, Maritain himself in Man and the State remarks that “in my capacity as an Aristotelian, I am not much of an idealist” (1998, 200).8 Yet as a variety of scholars—friendly as well as critical—observe, they develop the thought of their predecessors in a decidedly modern context. Simon himself explains that his goal is not simply to tell us what Aquinas thought about democracy but rather to develop “a Thomistic treatment of the problem of democracy” (Simon 1942, 258); he accordingly does not base his argument on the authority of Aquinas, or Aristotle, but on the value of the insights acquired through their perspective (Kuic 1999, 12-13).9 Insofar as Simon and Maritain grappled with the modern world, they placed a significant emphasis on the fact of pluralism. 10 Maritain repeatedly observed that the era of a theologically and politically unified Christendom had been replaced by an age in which various political societies would comprise people of differing religious faiths. “The modern age is . . . a secular age,” and the political common good can be achieved without “unity of religion” (1998, 159-60). Some of their emphasis on

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pluralism can be explained by the context in which they wrote: Both Maritain and Simon were affected by World War II, leaving their native France for the United States and appalled by the totalitarianism of the Nazi regime. More important, they gave their Walgreen lectures during the Cold War, when the collectivism of the Soviet Union posed an ideological threat to individual freedom. However, Maritain and Simon insist their arguments for pluralism do not simply reflect a historical reality or a fear of totalitarian regimes. Both invoke Aristotle in defense of their views, arguing that his rejection of the proposals of Plato’s Socrates in the Republic support a pluralist conception of politics. Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Republic is found primarily at the beginning of Book II of his Politics, although other references are scattered throughout the text.11 Book II opens with a consideration of what others have said about the best regime, and the appropriate starting point for such an inquiry is the extent to which things are held in common. A city in which nothing is held in common would, after all, not be a city. But by taking up the claims of Socrates in the Republic, Aristotle shows that a city in which everything is held in common would also not be a city.12 Aristotle claims that Socrates errs in asserting that the city should be one as much as possible. As a city becomes increasingly unified, it ceases to be a city insofar as “the city is in its nature a sort of multitude” (1261a18). Indeed the city comprises not only different human beings but human beings who differ in kind and thus relies on “reciprocal equality” to preserve itself (1261a30-31). Moreover, the city is less unified, and thus more self-sufficient, than the household. The city’s value as a selfsufficient community depends on its plural character. For Aristotle, what Socrates claims to be the greatest good for the city would actually make the city into a different kind of community. Aristotle is equally critical of the means Socrates proposes to unify the city, particular the notorious proposals to abolish private property and private families. (He is, however, curiously silent about the proposal for philosophers to rule.) In defending these radical proposals, Socrates appealed to the traditional Greek proverb that the things of friends are common, but, citing the same proverb, Aristotle argues that insofar as people care more for what is their own, it is better to hold things privately (1263a29-30). It is their use, rather than their possession, that ought to be common, and there will be more goods to use when particular individuals care for their own property, just as affection for others is fostered by having particular families.13 Aristotle’s views are reflected by Maritain and Simon in various ways. A true political community is self-sufficient, and self-sufficiency requires

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variety (Maritain 1998, 197). Because variety is essential to political community, the unity appropriate to such a community is therefore less than the unity appropriate to an individual (Simon 1993, 52). And much like Aristotle suggests that kingship was necessary in times when few people possessed sufficient virtue for political life (1286b7-10), Maritain suggests that Christendom, with its requisite “unity of faith,” reflected not an ideal but rather an underdeveloped temporal society in which the Church was required to assume “many functions and responsibilities” the “civil order” was incapable of fulfilling. Modern societies, however, have achieved “complete differentiation,” freeing the Church from its temporal responsibilities and enabling it to focus on “vivifying inspiration” (1998, 158-59, 162).

Simon and the Value of Particular Goods Simon uses Aristotle’s argument for the value of private property and families in support of his argument for the necessity of authority, even in a community of perfectly wise and virtuous human beings—an argument he also finds supported in Aquinas.14 The opposite view is famously taken by Publius in the Federalist papers, who declares that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” (Madison 2003, 319). Simon argues, however, that all communities require an authority that wills, intends, and cares for the common good in a material as well as formal sense. To borrow David Koyzis’s useful framework, Simon distinguishes between “particularity of function,” which is “rooted in the need for a division of labor,” and “particularity of subject,” which acknowledges “a diversity of autonomous goods” that can be pursued and thus requires “a genuine autonomy of self-ruling agents each of whom pursues a private good.”15 Because particular “autonomous goods”—such as individual families, individual property—are beneficial to society, it is good for society that many of its members dedicate themselves to the care of such goods. Simon contrasts this care for “autonomous goods” with the requisite specialized care for various parts of the common good, a “particularity of function,” which can be found in Plato as well as Aristotle (see, e.g., Rep. 370b). Examples of this would include a general responsible for determining “the objective of a [particular] army unit” as part of a nation’s overall military strategy or the responsibilities of “the director of public health,” whose special, particularized expertise is necessary to achieve the continued physical well-being of the members of the community (1993, 55-6). According to Simon, the lesson from Aristotle’s criticism of the Republic is not simply the recognition of the value of specialization in

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pursuing common goods but the recognition of the value of particular goods: “That particular goods be properly defended by particular persons matters greatly for the common good itself” (1993, 41). If all property were held in common, it would be less developed. If all family relations were abolished, there would be no true affection between individuals. “A society in which none intends, even materially, a particular good is like a dead world” (1993, 55). It is essential that some, perhaps many or even most, members of society devote themselves to caring for such particular goods. There would be no good of the community, Simon alleges, “unless particular goods are intended by particular appetites and taken care of by particular agents” (1993, 55). It is equally important, though, that some persons have the responsibility for willing the common good not only abstractly but in concrete ways, else “it would not be intended at all” (1993, 56). To be sure, those who care for particular goods ought to “obey those in charge of the common good,” but Simon—here invoking Aquinas—also praises the wife who, though she ordinarily (i.e., formally) wills that criminals be punished, opposes the execution of her husband for murder (1993, 41). The necessity of authority stems not only, as most believe, from the deficiencies of individual human beings but also from the necessity of insuring unanimity of action amidst genuine alternatives and of constituting “a nonparticular reason and will” to intend materially the common good (1993, 56).16 In his later A General Theory of Authority (originally published posthumously in 1962, a year after his death), Simon repeats this central insight. He does not acknowledge Aristotle here but the influence is clear: “The state is the community which is so complete and self-sufficient that its good is not that of a particular subject—individual, family, township, etc.—but, unqualifiedly, the common good of men assembled for the sake of noble life” (1991, 61). He knows all too well that “no human community is unqualifiedly complete” but urges us to strive toward “something beyond the least incomplete” of our existing communities (1991, 73 n 20). To do this requires particular goods pursued by particular persons but also, he emphasizes, authority so that the common good can be pursued adequately. Authority can, of course, be used poorly, and a second Aristotelian influence appears in Simon’s argument for the value of “democratic” regimes. Although the fundamental distinction Aristotle draws in his division of regimes in Book III of the Politics is between those regimes that rule for the sake of the common advantage and those regimes that rule for the private advantage of the rulers, Simon refers to a passage in Book I where Aristotle distinguishes between despotic and political authority. The

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former involve a master ruling his slaves, a clear relationship of fundamental inequality; the latter involves a statesman who rules over his fellow citizens despite a measure of equality between them. Aristotle’s example is that the soul rules the body despotically, like a master, while the intellect rules the appetites in a political fashion, for both are parts of the soul. Drawing on Aquinas’s commentary on this passage, Simon suggests that the key aspect of this distinction is not simply whether the rule is for the benefit of the ruler or the ruled but also whether the ruled have some means of resistance to the ruler (1993, 72-73, referring to I.1254b2-9).17 Simon therefore classifies regimes as despotic if the ruled have no institutionalized resistance to “bad government” and as political if “the resistance of people to bad government is institutionally organized” (1993, 72). Despotic regimes, he notes, can do good things, and it is far from certain that political regimes must be democratic: The nobility, after all, long served as a check on monarchs (1993, 73, 75). However, Simon also suggests “a political regime, in the theory of Aristotle, is necessarily democratic to a degree” (1993, 73n1). Democratic political institutions— whether directly democratic or the more common representative form— offer a unique form of resistance to bad government (1993, 76). Indeed, Simon will later make this “the most decisive argument” for democratic regimes with universal suffrage: They alone offer average citizens the possibility of influencing what the government does (1993, 98). “The common man has neither the distinction of property nor that of expertness nor any of the distinctions on the ground of which a person belongs to the upper class; he will be crushed unless the constitution of society attaches some power to the only distinction that he certainly possesses, viz., that of having numbers on his side” (1993, 97). Yet as Simon acknowledges, democracy seeks more than simply resisting bad government. “True, the ambition of democracy, from the very start [emphasis added], goes beyond the establishment of a political regime. . . . When the political ideal assumes the democratic form, the people asserts, over and above its freedom from abusive power, its freedom to govern itself. . . . Such is democratic freedom, the defining feature of democracy” (1993, 76). The seed of self-government in Aristotle’s political regime has borne fruit in the modern world. Simon contends that the “horrid experience” of “the catastrophes of the twentieth century” have undermined the case for aristocracy (1993, 93). The belief that “the destiny of the common man was safely intrusted [sic] to the wisdom of the upper class . . . is gone, apparently, forever” (1993, 98-9)—a possible explanation for the populist sentiments found in Western democracies. Moreover, “it seems that the

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principle of universal suffrage must be numbered among those propositions which, at a given moment of history, have got hold of the human conscience and, from then on, never can be rejected, though they may call for reinterpretation” (1993, 78). Simon offers such a reinterpretation through his “pessimistic” justification of democracy—denying, for instance, that “the people” are always and everywhere more virtuous than the few—but also through his defense of a regime that is only partially democratic. He is all too aware of the dangers of “a particularly formidable kind of tyranny, that of the majority” (1993, 99). In this, Simon has modern companions—Madison, Mill, and Tocqueville inter alia—but also Aristotle himself, who fears a majority determining what is just on the basis of a vote. Moreover, Aristotle even fears that such a resolution will come to bear a divine imprimatur, as the democratic opinion is prefaced with an oath by Zeus (1281a16). 18 As Thomas Pangle notes, Aristotle “speaks at greater length and more emphatically of the tyrannical proclivity of democratic law” than oligarchic law in raising questions about the claim of any regime to rule (2013, 139). Though he may move beyond Aristotle in his support for a democratically-inclined regime, in both his argument for authority and limiting that authority, Simon draws significantly on Aristotle.

Maritain’s Man against the State Maritain echoes Simon’s arguments about pluralism in his insistence on distinguishing the State from the Body Politic, a distinction he finds in Aristotle’s text (Pol. III.15.1286b31, IV.4.1290a32) that subsequent translators have often “muddled” (1998, 30).19 The State, for Maritain, is simply one part of the Body Politic, the part charged with “the maintenance of law, the promotion of common welfare and public order, and the administration of public affairs” (1998, 12). It is, to be sure, “the superior part in the body politic” insofar as its actions are necessary to achieve the common good (1998, 13). Its superiority to the other parts of the body politic, however, does not imply that it is superior to the body politic itself. Much modern democratic thought—especially that of Rousseau—has emphasized the State as “a metaphysical monad,” reflecting a “supreme degree of unity” (1998, 17). Maritain resists this, insisting instead on a pluralistic conception of politics.20 The image of the body politic is somewhat misleading in its suggestion of unity; political society is “a work of reason,” rooted in a common task or purpose (1998, 2). Its success depends on not only individual citizens but also “other particular societies” like families and “private enterprises” (1998, 10-11,

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22). The State’s function is often to support these particular societies, not to direct them (1998, 22). To explain pluralism in Man and the State, Maritain refers readers to his earlier works, specifically, chapter 1 of Freedom in the Modern World (originally published in 1933 as Du regime temporal et de la liberté) and chapter 5 of Integral Humanism (originally published in 1936 as Humanisme integral). In the former work, Maritain refers several times to Aristotle or Aristotelian concepts. He emphasizes the concept of self-sufficiency (autarkeia)—which, as we saw earlier, required plurality—as essential to a true understanding of freedom. Freedom is not simply about choice but about becoming what we are essentially are, i.e., each of us ought to be a person (1996, 19). Maritain’s conception of “personalism” has significant ramifications for a proper understanding of political life: He argues against both the “liberal” and “individualist” conception of freedom in which unlimited choice is the highest good (1996, 23-24), and the “imperialist or dictatorial” conception of freedom according to which “the common task” is valued at the expense of the individual (1996, 24-25). Against both of these, Maritain champions an understanding of the common good that “provides the true earthly life of man” yet is “intrinsically subordinated to the eternal good of individual citizens and to the achievement of their freedom of autonomy” (1996, 25). That is, the temporal common good is both an end and a means to a greater end, and that greater end is the good not of a community but of individual citizens. This cannot be achieved through the efforts of political society alone; it requires the work of the smaller communities, those championed by Simon, to develop “moral rectitude, justice, friendship, happiness, virtue, and heroism in the individual lives of members of the body politic” (1998, 12). In arguing that the body politic has a higher end than material security or prosperity, Maritain appeals to the “rationalization of political life” offered by Aristotle that is later adopted by the mediaeval thinkers to support democratic life (1998, 58-59). This rational view of politics promotes “the essentially human ends of political life” along with the necessary traits of “justice, law, and mutual friendship” to achieve it. The rational view of politics subordinates the material factors and power struggles characteristic of Machiavellianism to the higher ends of “human freedom” and “the common good” (1998, 59). At its core is an “awareness of the innermost needs of mankind’s life, of the real requirements of peace and love, and of the moral spiritual energies of man” (1998, 59). It is, Maritain argues, only this view that can truly animate the “democratic conception” of politics active in the 20th century, for democracy is the only way to offer a genuine, moral—even if fragile—rationalization of politics

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(1998, 59-60). As the central books of his Politics make clear, Aristotle was fully aware that politics oftentimes became a struggle for power between various groups, especially the rich and the poor. However, he emphasizes in the first book that a true political community is constituted by its sharing in speech, logos, about what is just and good; the proper end of such communities is not simply living or acquiring the means of living but rather living well. Such a view is fragile because it is consistently confronted by the (legitimate) demands for what is necessary.

Simon and Aristotle on Democracy and the Mixed Regime Having seen the uses made of Aristotle by Simon and Maritain, let us now consider whether they have distorted his thought. Simon has frequently been criticized for his insistence that Aquinas adopts a “theory of natural democracy” (1993, 176), that is, a “theory that power belongs primarily to the people” (1993, 159). 21 However, Simon praises not a simple democracy but rather a mixed regime reminiscent of Aristotle and Aquinas in which “several forms [of rule] are combined in such a way as to promote the various aspects of the common good” (1993, 107). He emphasizes that such a mixture not only better achieves the common good but also secures democracy “by holding in check forces fatal to it,” such as “sharp strife among parties or factions” (1993, 106). 22 He therefore considers most contemporary “democracies” to be “mixed regimes with a predominance of the democratic element”—at least in theory, for in practice “the oligarchic element” is often powerful (1993, 107-8). Simon is aware that neither Aquinas nor Aristotle is enthusiastic about democracy; each of them “generally uses the word ‘democracy’ to designate a corrupt form of government” (1993, 176). 23 Indeed, Simon also admits the (democratic) view that political power naturally inheres in a multitude, who may—and generally should—transmit it to a governing body, is not found directly in Aquinas but in his commentators (1993, 16076). 24 However, Simon also highlights the democratic implications of Aquinas’s suggestion that the Mosaic law proposed “fitting” guidelines concerning rulers. To be sure, the Old Law instituted a mixed regime, just as “the Philosopher” [Aristotle] recommended, but it had a definitively democratic character insofar as rulers were selected by and more importantly from all the people. Indeed, the first point to be observed about constitutions is that it is essential that “all should take some share in the government” (1993, 107 n12). Moreover, in discussing the proper authority for making laws (which, famously, must be ordained toward the common good), Aquinas states that such authority properly belongs to

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either “the whole people” or to their representative (1993, 158). Indeed, Aquinas even holds that customs, when accepted by the whole people, have greater weight than a law made by a representative of the people (1993, 159). These discussions may not require accepting the transmission theory, Simon acknowledges, but that theory “is in full agreement” with what Aquinas says. Simon’s democracy is better understand as a mixed regime akin to what Aristotle and Aquinas identify as the best practical regime.25 Indeed, Simon defends a properly mixed regime that is perhaps closer to Aristotle than that envisioned by, say, James Madison. For Madison, the Constitution of the United States advances on previous constitutions by constructing an extended but also an unmixed regime, in which all the powers of government are derived “directly or indirectly from the great body of the people” (Madison 2003, 237). Being wholly popular, the possibility of tyranny is prevented by having ambitious officeholders who check each other (2003, 319). Simon, by contrast, defends “nondemocratic characters” like hereditary monarchs or political parties as a means of checking the dangerous tendencies within democracies (1993, 106). Moreover, insofar as the common good includes “the particularization of interests, of activities, and of capacities” (Simon 1993, 129), a political regime will value and protect those particular associations that have interests, activities, and capacities (1993, 136-9). Simon argues for a principle of autonomy that reflects the (Aristotelian) truth that “there is more life and unqualifiedly greater perfection in a community all parts of which are full of initiative than in a community whose parts act merely as instruments” (1993, 130-31). This requires respecting and empowering smaller political units—provinces, counties, towns—and non-political associations—businesses, families, churches, and especially private property—even if it comes at a slight cost to efficiency (1993, 130, 134). The danger of absolutism, especially in a democracy, is resisted best “by forces external to the state apparatus” such as the church, the press, the private school, the labor union and cooperative (1993, 137-38, emphasis added). These institutions prevent the state from exerting too much control but they also offer a greater number of human beings the chance to live freely rather than as the natural slaves described by Aristotle (1993, 131). The presence of varied autonomous communities thus serves to resist the tendency of centralization common to democracies and both governmental power and the power of public opinion.26 Although he would no doubt value more than Aristotle the contribution made by religious bodies to the common good, Simon’s structural pluralism that both resists despotic power and advances the common and

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particular goods does seem to have some grounding in the “pluralist” criticism of Plato’s Republic. The contribution of various groups to the common good requires preserving the autonomy of those groups. It is, I think, less clear whether the pluralism for which Maritain is best known can claim a similar antecedent.27

Maritain’s Christian Pluralism and Classical Political Rationalism Precisely because Maritain places such emphasis on the political community’s development of the highest potential of persons, he insists that the modern state must be pluralist. The state, after all, is but a part of the “body politic” that “belongs to another, superior order” (1998, 7). As part of this body politic, the state is responsible for preserving “the order of justice” (1998, 21). However, each of the people who “constitute a body politic” has “a spiritual soul and a supra-temporal destiny” (1998, 26). To allow people to work toward these higher ends requires that we go beyond simple Machiavellianism (1998, 56 ff.), but it also requires that the modern state help each citizen to achieve “genuine freedom of expansion or autonomy,” that is, “something substantially good and ethical” (1998, 55). This requirement leads Maritain to propose the “democratic charter,” a set of “practical truths regarding their life in common” about which people can agree even as they disagree on the ultimate truths that justify the charter (1998, 76-8). Maritain contends that in “any given period and culture” most philosophical and theological systems agree about the necessary “rules of behavior,” reflecting a universal human nature especially with regard to ends shared by all (1998, 80-85). However, behind this agreement will be a body politic with diverse “philosophical or religious creeds and lineages” (1998, 109). As long as these various creeds and lineages accept “the basic tenets which are at the core” of a “society of free men” (1998, 109), they are capable of being a part of a democratic society. Democracy requires a democratic faith, but it is “a civic or secular faith, not a religious one,” limited to the “practical tenets” about living together in society (1998, 110). Democracy cannot ask any of its citizens to adhere to “any philosophic or religious creed” (1998, 110).28 It can do no more than, and indeed must, promote “among its citizens, mainly through education, the human and temporal—and essentially practical— creed” (1998, 111).29 And even when confronted by “political heretics” (1998, 119) democracy can only respond when their activity is illegal or threatens the democratic charter by “tangible acts” (1998, 117-18).

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Behind Maritain’s insistence on the pluralistic character of democracies is his belief that the “political common good” is “something which transcends it,” i.e., “the higher ends of the human person” (1998, 149). The body politic is concerned with “the temporal realm,” which is inferior to “the order of eternal life” (1998, 153). Therefore, society is obligated to protect “the right freely to believe the truth recognized by one’s conscience”; indeed, this is “the most basic and inalienable of all human rights” (1998, 150). To be sure, this principle also requires the freedom of the Church “to teach and preach and worship”—but not to compel belief (1998, 151-52).30 From a theological perspective, Maritain sees this pluralism as “a misfortune” (1998, 108); divisions among the faithful are to be lamented. Yet he seems to praise the political consequences of this development: The theological unity of the middle ages was appropriate only to “a sacral age” that has now ended; in our time, the “differentiation and full autonomy” of the secular realm requires us to respect the “freedom of the individual conscience” (1998, 157-61, emphasis added). 31 Maritain is not neutral about this differentiation, holding that the body politic “has become more perfectly distinguished” from the Church (1998, 108). With this distinction and differentiation, all citizens “must freely bear judgment, according to their own personal conscience, on every matter pertaining to the political common good” (1998, 164). Precisely because, for Maritain, we transcend the state in virtue of what is highest in us, the state must be tolerant of that highest potentiality and thus allow religious and philosophical freedom unless and until such freedom results in “tangible acts” that threaten society (1998, 117-18). Unless such a proposal is no more than a prudential accommodation to contemporary realities, it is hard to see how this understanding of contemporary political community is consistent with Aristotle. In the very criticism of Plato’s Republic on which Maritain relies, Aristotle contends that Socrates errs not only in his end—to make the city as unified as a single individual—but also in his means, relying on institutions like the abolition of property and the family to unify a city. A city, Aristotle therefore argues, ought to be “made one and common through education,” by means of “habits, philosophy, and laws,” rather than through the community of property and women and children (Pol. 1263b36-40). 32 Philosophy should serve to unify, rather than to divide, the citizens. As the middle books of the Politics make abundantly clear, Aristotle is a realist, and he does not expect most cities to reflect this unity. It is more likely that cities will suffer from the conflict that arises from the diverse contributions of the diverse parts that compose them. Chief among the

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possible causes of faction is, of course, the tension between oligarchs and democrats that is dramatized dialectically in Book III. And even in Aristotle’s best regime, there is the possibility of disagreement—if not outright conflict—among virtuous citizens about what ought to be done.33 It is hard, therefore, to find in Aristotle support for Maritain’s acceptance of the fundamental philosophical and theological disagreements that characterize the contemporary world rather than an attempt to overcome them, particularly insofar as disagreements about justice tend to reflect disagreements about how to live. However, perhaps Maritain is closer to Aristotle than we might think. In a discussion of friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle praises the virtue of homonoia—concord, like-mindedness—among citizens. Legislators seek to create this quality “most of all” insofar as it is similar to friendship and thus helps to banish faction (NE 1155a21-24). 34 Yet Aristotle’s understanding of homonoia involves agreement more on matters of action than speculation: It involves agreement about what “things should be done” and exists when “people judge alike” about what is advantageous, “choose the same things,” and act on “what they believe in common” (1167a22-29). This last clause might seem to require a deeper agreement among citizens than Maritain’s pluralism allows, but perhaps it should be interpreted in light of the practical context of the other facets and the examples Aristotle gives us. Two of these are quite specific— whether a treaty ought to be made with Sparta and whether Pittacus ought to rule—but two are broader, whether offices ought to be elected and whether the best people ought to rule (1167a29-b3). 35 These latter examples raise the possibility that homonoia—agreement about “what is advantageous and what relates to life” (1167b3-4)—can co-exist with Maritain’s philosophical and religious pluralism.36 Even if Maritain departs from Aristotle in suggesting that a city may be unified despite differing philosophies, he sustains the democratic charter through an appropriately Aristotelian means, i.e., education. Maritain holds that citizens have a right to an education and, though education begins in the family, the state has a duty to provide it to citizens (1998, 119-120). This responsibility goes beyond technical and even liberal education; it requires providing “a genuine and reasoned-out belief in the common democratic charter” (1998, 120). But—and here Maritain differs from, say, John Rawls—to defend only the “practical tenets” of the democratic charter would be insufficient; citizens must be taught, and taught by the state, not only the “what” of their common beliefs but also the “why.” The democratic charter must be given “a theoretical foundation and justification” if it is to be accepted with sufficient vigor. Maritain thus

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proposes that those who defend the charter do so not simply with respect to its practical conclusions but also how their “philosophical or religious faith” leads them to support it (1998, 121). Therefore, a variety of teachers who reflect the varying philosophical and religious beliefs of a particular area (e.g., its “moral geography”) are necessary within the “all the schools and educational institutions” (1998, 122-23). This pluralism need not extend to curricular matters, but the “religious or philosophical convictions” of those who teach the democratic charter should “roughly correspond to those which prevail in the social environment” (1998, 123). Thus the democratic charter is not taught by one individual but by “several teachers belonging to the main religious or philosophical traditions represented in the student population” (1998, 123). In this way, Maritain would hope to strengthen the commitment of citizens to the democratic charter while respecting the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs that is a fact of the modern world.37 Insofar as the democratic charter is a faith, it requires ongoing sustenance and defense: To preserve “the freedom of expression and criticism” requires an “inner energy of democratic faith and civil morality in the people themselves” that can only be sustained by commitment to the democratic charter (1998, 145-46). Maritain’s relevant insight here is that we may be able to create better democratic citizens, more willing to engage and work with those who hold different beliefs, if we understand better those beliefs that differ from our own—a process reflective of the dialectical engagements between oligarch and democrat in book III of Aristotle’s Politics. A conception of the public square or of public reason that demands we abstract from our deepest philosophical and religious commitments is not only, as Michael Sandel (1998) has frequently argued, untrue to who we are but also prevents us from understanding the commitments of those around us. At a time when citizens have become increasingly likely to “sort” themselves into homogeneous communities,38 a suggestion like Maritain’s could help us move in the opposite direction. Maritain’s philosophical and theological pluralism clearly has more in common than Simon’s with the kind of political divisions we see today. Yet he is more optimistic than we might be that such divisions can be overcome by friendly agreement about what is to be done, even if not what is to be believed. If we think him too optimistic,39 we might benefit from the more classically rational solution of Simon, emphasizing the importance of smaller, local communities—political or otherwise—where the homonoia that approximates civic friendship (NE 1167b2) can be more readily developed.

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Bibliography Aristotle. 2002. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Joseph Sachs. Newburyport, MA: Focus. —. 2014. The Politics of Aristotle. Trans. Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. Bates, Jr. Clifford Angell. 2003. Aristotle’s Best Regime: Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press). Bishop, Bill. 2008. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Cherry, Kevin M. 2009. “The Problem of Polity: Political Participation and Aristotle’s Best Regime.” Journal of Politics 71 (4): 1406-21. Crosson, Frederick J. 1983. “Maritain and Natural Rights.” Review of Metaphysics 36 (4): 895-912. Evans, Joseph W. 1960. “Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Pluralism in Political Life.” Review of Politics 22 (3): 307-23. Galston, William A. and Pietro S. Nivola. 2006. “Delineating the Problem.” In Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics, Vol. 1. Eds. Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Hittinger, John P. 1994. “Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon’s Use of Thomas Aquinas in Their Defense of Liberal Democracy,” in Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy. Ed. David M. Gallagher. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, pp.149-72. Klonoski, Richard J. 1996. “Homonoia in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics.” History of Political Thought 17 (3): 313-25. Koyzis, David T. 1989. “Yves R. Simon’s Contribution to a Structural Political Pluralism.” Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J. Adler. Ed. Michael D. Torre. Notre Dame, IN: American Maritain Association and University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 131-9. Kries, Douglas. 1990. “Thomas Aquinas and the Politics of Moses.” Review of Politics 52 (1): 84-104. Kuic, Vukan. 1999. Yves R. Simon: Real Democracy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Layman, Geoffrey C., Thomas M. Casey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz. 2006. “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences.” Annual Review of Political Science 9: 83110.

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Madison, James et al. [1787-88] 2003. The Federalist Papers. Eds. Clinton Rossiter and Charles R. Kesler. New York: Signet. Maritain, Jacques. [1936] 1973. Integral Humanism. Trans. Joseph W. Evans. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. —. [1933] 1996. Freedom in the Modern World. In The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, Vol. 11: Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and a Letter on Independence. Ed. Otto Bird. Trans. Richard O’Sullivan. Revised by Otto Bird. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. —. [1951] 1998. Man and the State. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Mayhew, Robert. 1997. Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Republic. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. McCarty, Nolan, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of Political Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McInerny, Ralph. 2003. The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Mezei, Balázs M. 2013. “Yves Simon’s Understanding of Aristotle: Some Comments.” Hungarian Philosophical Review 57 (4): 86-94. Nicgorski, Walter. 2011. “An Introduction to Yves R. Simon’s ‘The Doctrinal Issue Between the Church and Democracy.’” Logos 14 (1): 122-31. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. “Political Objectivity.” New Literary History 32 (4): 883-906. Pangle, Thomas. 2013. Aristotle’s Teaching in the Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rauch, Jonathan. 2016. “What’s Ailing American Politics?” Atlantic Monthly. July/August: 51-63. Sandel, Michael. [1982] 1998. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schall, James V. 1998. Jacques Maritain: The Philosopher in Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Sigmund, Paul E. 1987. “Maritain on Politics.” Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend. Eds. Deal W. Hudson and Matthew J. Mancini. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 153-70. Simon, Yves. 1942. “Thomism and Democracy.” In Science, Philosophy, and Religion, Second Symposium. Eds. Louis Finkelstein and Lyman Bryson. New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relations to the Democratic Way of Life, Vol. 2: 258-72.

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—. [1962] 1991. A General Theory of Authority. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. —. [1951] 1993. Philosophy of Democratic Government. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Skultety, Steven C. 2009. “Delimiting Aristotle’s Conception of Stasis in the Politics.” Phronesis 54: 346-70. —. 2012. “Disputes of the Phronimoi: Can Aristotle’s Best Citizens Disagree?” Ancient Philosophy 32: 105-24. Strauss, Leo. 1989. The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism. Selected and introduction by Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ward, Ann. 2016. Contemplating Friendship in Aristotle’s Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wilson, James Lindley. 2011. “Deliberation, Democracy, and the Rule of Reason in Aristotle’s Politics.” American Political Science Review 105 (2): 259-74. Yack, Bernard. 1993. The Problems of a Political Animal: Community, Conflict, and Justice in Aristotelian Political Thought. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Notes 1

I am grateful to David Schaefer, Ann Ward, and Lee Ward for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Christine Colburn of the University of Chicago and Julie Ettl of the University of Notre Dame for research assistance. I am especially grateful to John O’Callaghan, director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame, for providing ready access to Simon’s correspondence and notes about his lectures. 2 For overviews of the literature, see McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal (2006) and Layman, Carsey, and Horowitz (2006). As Galston and Nivola suggest, the most significant debate in the literature “is the extent to which polarized views among political leaders and activists are reflected in the public at large” (2006, 2). 3 As the respected political commentator Jonathan Rauch recently observed, “political parties no longer have either intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms” (2016, 52). 4 Hittinger 1994, 149. 5 Between these two exemplars of contemporary Thomism were the October 1949 lectures of Leo Strauss that became Natural Right and History. 6 McInerny refers to Man and the State as “the culmination of his [Maritain’s] political philosophy” (2003, 164). Nicgorski claims that “[t]here is no more profound and philosophically thorough modern examination of the idea of government and the democratic form of it than what is found in Simon's book” (2011, 123). Cf. Crosson, who takes Maritain’s sudden, and problematic,

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emphasis on natural rights in the lectures and book as a reason to “read Man and the State as in part a livre d’occasion and not as Maritain’s comprehensive statement on political philosophy” (1983, 903). 7 In his introduction to The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, Thomas Pangle refers to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as “the supreme products” of the dialectical encounter between the claims of the Socratic way of life and the demands of “family life, religion, and citizenship” that typify classical political rationalism (see Strauss 1989, xii). 8 There are relatively few explicit references to Aristotle in Man and the State, although he appears frequently in the other works toward which Maritain directs readers (e.g., 22 n14). 9 For a careful and persuasive analysis of the way in which Maritain and Simon appropriate Thomas Aquinas, see Hittinger 1994. 10 Martha Nussbaum identifies Maritain as “probably” the “first example of political liberalism in the West,” anticipating the later development in, e.g., Rawls (2001, 892-93). 11 All references to Aristotle’s Politics will be to Aristotle 2014. 12 An analytic account of Aristotle’s criticisms can be found in Mayhew 1997. 13 Aristotle indicates in Book I that the household plays an important role within the political community insofar as it, too, is a locus of communal reasoning about what is good and bad, just and unjust (Pol. 1253a15-19). 14 Simon 1993, 59 n23. In the prima pars of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argued that there would have been government among human beings even if the Fall had never occurred insofar as some humans would have surpassed others in wisdom and justice (I 96.4). 15 Koyzis 1989, 134. 16 Simon acknowledges that in smaller communities this can take the form of direct democracy in which agents responsible for particular goods also care for the common good materially considered but insists that there is generally a “distinct” governing personnel (1993, 57). 17 Simon admits that he is using the distinction “in a sense somewhat different from Aristotle’s” (1993, 73 n1). 18 The oligarchic or aristocratic objection to including the multitude in deliberations is also introduced with a similar oath (Pol. 1281b18). 19 Cf. Mezei 2013, who contends that Simon takes far more interest than Maritain in faithfully reflecting Aristotle’s Greek vocabulary. In these passages, Maritain complains that it is misleading to translate kurios as “sovereign” rather than the ruling part of the polis or body politic. Echoing Maritain’s criticism, Lord translates it as “authority.” 20 Evans 1960 is a useful summary of Maritain’s pluralism, especially the importance of friendship for its preservation (313-14). 21 See, e.g., Hittinger, who concludes that “Maritain and Simon derive a full-blown justification of liberal democracy” (1994, 156).

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22 In the current situation, it is perhaps worth noting Simon’s analysis that “When people are sufficiently exhausted by such strife [among parties or factions], the situation is ripe for the one-party system and dictatorship” (1993, 106). 23 Cf. Bates 2003, who argues that a democracy under law reflects Aristotle’s best regime. 24 See Hittinger 1994 for a discussion of the transmission theory. 25 See the valuable discussion of Aquinas and the mixed regime in Kries 1990; recent literature on Aristotle (e.g., Cherry 2009 and Wilson 2011) has also emphasized the contributions of the multitude to political life. 26 Koyzis 1989, 137. 27 To be sure, Maritain accepts Simon’s pluralism (e.g., 1998, 11-24, 65-68) but also goes beyond it. 28 This is so even though Maritain himself assumes that modern democracies will have “regained their Christian faith, or at least recognized the value and sensibleness of the Christian conception of freedom, social progress, and the political establishment” (1998, 109) and acknowledges that the practical tenets on which all creeds must agree—including “human dignity, freedom, brotherly love, and the absolute value of moral good”—requires consciences “awakened by the Gospel leaven” (1998, 111). This raises the question of whether the democratic charter is as neutral as he claims, but Maritain himself emphasizes the other side: Christians will be among the firmest supporters of the democratic creed (1998, 113-14). 29 Maritain holds that education begins in the family but insists that an adequate “genuine and reasoned-out belief in the common democratic charter” requires an education that goes beyond what a family can offer (1998, 120). 30 Hittinger argues that behind the defense of democracy in Maritain and Simon is an assumption of equality found not in Aquinas’s political thought but in his “metaphysics and epistemology,” according to which we are all equal insofar as we are all share in the nature of human beings and ought to enjoy an equal set of rights that enable us to flourish (1994, 159-61) 31 Sigmund contends that Maritain used “traditional Thomistic categories to argue to a conclusion that would have horrified Saint Thomas” (1987, 161). 32 The legislators of Sparta and Crete did this successfully with regard to property by instituting common messes; the implication, however, is that simply making property common in use is not enough. 33 See, for instance, Skultety 2009 and 2012. 34 All references to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are to Aristotle 2002. 35 On the extent to which homonoia requires shared beliefs, cf. Yack 1993, 11416, and Klonoski 1996. 36 Ward argues that civic friendship is most possible among citizens who are roughly equal, as in the “democratic” polities Simon and Maritain endorse (2016, 110-18). 37 Maritain does, of course, believe that “Judeo-Christian tenets” offer the best support for the democratic charter (1998, 125), but he also suggests that this truth

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that must be demonstrated through the actions as well as the arguments of JudeoChristian citizens (1998, 164-65). 38 See Bishop 2008. 39 The question of Maritain’s optimism is raised in a blurb by Ralph McInerny on the back of the 1998 edition of Man and the State.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THOMAS PIKETTY’S “REMEDIES” FOR OLIGARCHY: EXACERBATING AND GLOBALIZING THE E.U.’S DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT DAVID LEWIS SCHAEFER1

Introduction This essay addresses the “remedies” for the supposed danger of increasing economic inequality proposed by French economist Thomas Piketty in his 2014 (American) bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century (hereafter CITC; parenthetic textual page citations refer to this work).2 Based on the ostensible “law” that returns on capital over time inevitably outpace those on labor (abbreviated as r>g, 25-7) – barring severe periodic disruptions such as world wars or major depressions – Piketty warns that without radical increases in taxation on high incomes and accumulated wealth, to be administered initially by a European "budgetary parliament” (but ultimately requiring some sort of worldwide counterpart to that vaguely described institution) we might arrive by the end of the present century at a condition in which capitalists, bankers, and/ or Middle Eastern oil sheikhs own all the property that exists in the world - down to people's bicycles! - "once and for all" (6). Most critical discussion of CITC, at least in the U.S., both positive and negative, has focused on the evidence Piketty proffers to demonstrate that the perpetuation of democracy in developed Western nations is threatened by the restoration of a new oligarchy based on inherited wealth, to the point of rivaling the sort of landed aristocracy he portrays as characteristic of nineteenth-century France. But leaving aside the gross exaggeration contained in Piketty’s warning about oil sheiks and bankers owning our bicycles, as well as his questionable economic logic and evidence

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(documented by many critics),3 I believe that the greater significance of CITC (and of its appeal to many putatively liberal intellectuals) lies in its disparagement, in the name of a professed determination to "bet everything on democracy" (573), of the actual practice of self-government; its depreciation of the qualities of citizen character that self-government presupposes; and its denial of the liberal understanding of the purpose of such government, enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence, as the securing of such individual rights, or "negative" liberties, as life, liberty, and property, and the opportunity to pursue happiness as one conceives it (so long as one respects the equal rights of other persons).

Piketty's Proposed Global Tax on Capital After devoting the first three parts of his book to the supposed effects of r>g, in Part IV, "Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Piketty outlines an "ideal policy for avoiding an endless inegalitarian spiral" in the form of a "progressive global tax on capital" (471) the administration of which will require a higher "level of international cooperation and ... integration" than existing "nation-states in which earlier social compromises were carried out" are capable of (573). "Unfortunately," Piketty laments, it is likely that "actual responses" to the crisis he foresees, "including various nationalist responses - will in practice be far more modest and less effective" (27). Nonetheless, even though "[m]any people will reject" the proposed global tax as "a dangerous illusion, just as the income tax" was originally rejected, he counsels that when closely examined, "this solution turns out to be far less dangerous than the alternatives," such as the pressure for "protectionism coupled with ... capital controls" that might otherwise build - apparently in response to global inequality (516). Those who followed the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign will find Piketty's reference to the threat of counterproductive economic protectionism, as well as resentment of supposedly unjust inequality, all too familiar. They may even regard Piketty's warnings as prescient. What is remarkable, however, is that unlike those who rail about inequality like Bernie Sanders, Piketty does not ground his call for increased capital taxes chiefly on any perceived need for increased social spending to alleviate the lot of the poor (even though he does express support for such an increase). Nor does he propose, as Donald Trump has sometimes done, to try to limit capital movements in order to combat job losses supposedly caused by such activity. Instead, Piketty emphasizes that the "primary purpose" of the global capital tax - which he promises "would never be more than a fairly modest supplement to the other revenue streams on which the

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modern social [welfare] state depends," i.e., a mere "few points of national income" (one might question that adjective, considering that Piketty is talking of removing three or four points of a country's capital earnings each year, which even he admits is "nothing to sneeze at") - is "not to finance the social state but to regulate capitalism." In other words, Piketty isn’t trying to justify this proposed tax increase on any ground of financial need. Rather, its purpose is simply "to stop the indefinite increase of inequality of wealth" and "impose effective regulation on the financial and banking system in order to avoid [unspecified] crises." Piketty writes as if the sheer act of making wealthier people less well off - regardless of any use to which the resultant tax receipts will be put - will itself somehow make the world a better place (518). Whatever thoughts may be bandied in the ivory towers of academic economists or by demagogic politicians, this is a novel view of just or beneficial public policy to be propounded to citizens of modern liberal, commercial republics, where it has been widely recognized until recently that continued economic growth, which benefits all citizens, depends rather on encouraging individual enterprise rather than on fomenting class warfare.4 Piketty adds that a subsidiary goal of the global tax - to "generate information about the distribution of wealth" among individuals throughout the world - could be achieved by even a (relatively) low assessment, i.e., "a flat rate of 0.1 percent a year on all assets." The sheer act of collecting such information would enable "national governments, international organizations, and statistical offices around the world ... to produce reliable data about the evolution of global wealth" (518). The public dissemination of upper- and middle-class citizens' financial information might of course be viewed by some as an unwarranted intrusion on their privacy - which many Americans already regard as fragile thanks to the reported misuse of people's personal financial data by the Internal Revenue Service under the Obama administration. Piketty, however, assures readers that the resultant "benefit to democracy would be considerable," since "it is very difficult to have a rational debate about the great challenges facing the world today - the future of the social state, the cost of the transition to new sources of energy, state-building in the developing world, and so on - because the global distribution of wealth remains so opaque" (519). He offers no illustration, let alone demonstration, of how acquiring and publicizing information on the precise amounts of property owned by individuals would facilitate resolving such issues. But he maintains that even a low-end tax on capital would promote refinement of "the definitions of various asset types" and "set rules for valuing assets, liabilities, and net wealth," thereby helping to avert (by a process he does

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not specify) "the many financial scandals the world has seen since 2000" (520). How many nations will readily accede to having even 0.1 percent of their assets taxed away each year just for the sake of (allegedly) improving accounting methods? Perhaps the most curious aspect of Piketty's case for a "progressive annual tax on individual wealth" - not merely the "low" flat rate just discussed - is that it would contribute more fully to the achievement of "financial transparency and information," since "[w]ithout a clear idea of what all the information [collected] is to be used for, current data-sharing proposals are unlikely to achieve" their "desired result" (516). In other words, aside from its value in combating global inequality, the capital tax would promote more effective data collection by giving it a purpose - to serve as a basis for determining how much tax each well-off person ought to pay. This appears to be a clear case of putting the cart before the horse. Normally, we think that governments need effective means of acquiring financial data in order to derive necessary revenue in accordance with laws that are perceived to treat individuals fairly, discouraging tax evasion as well as criminal activity (money laundering, human trafficking, drug dealing). Piketty, however, represents the accumulation of revenue as instrumental to the collection of data! Without a global tax on capital, on top of the taxes already collected by national and local governments, there wouldn't be a manifest enough reason for information-sharing. So wealthier individuals should fork over a substantial percentage of their annual capital gains, just to give government data collectors something to do with the information they’ve acquired! The strikingly offhanded manner in which Piketty approaches the notion of confiscating significant portions of people's wealth - for no other reason than to make them less well-off, along with providing a purpose for data collection - is apparent when he gets to proposing actual rates. He prefaces his initial proposal - "a rate of 0 percent for net assets below 1 million euros, 1 percent between 1 and 5 million, and 2 percent above 5 million" - with the revealing phrase "One might imagine." He then adds that "one might prefer a much more steeply progressive tax on the largest fortunes (for example, a rate of 5 or 10 percent on assets above 1 billion euros)," and that "there might also be advantages in having a minimal rate on modest-to-average wealth (for example, 0.1 percent below 200,000 euros and 0.5 percent between 200,000 and 1 million)" (517 [emphases added]). Do not the italicized phrases make apparent the fact that there is no foundation in actual reasoning - economic or otherwise - for any of the figures that Piketty throws out, but that he's just making it up as he goes along, appealing to people's arbitrary imaginings or preferences? What

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could justify giving government the right to engage in such financial confiscation (of which this is only the first stage, as we will note subsequently) merely to satisfy people's idiosyncratic wishes? (In a followup Piketty adds that "there is no reason why the tax rate on fortunes above 5 million euros should be limited to 2 percent." Instead, he proposes as "the simplest and fairest procedure .... to set rates on the basis of observed returns in each wealth bracket over several prior years," requiring rates of 5 percent or of "10 percent or higher on billionaires" to prevent "divergence of the wealth distribution [that is, a steadily increasing share belonging to the top centiles and thousandths], which on its face seems to be a minimally desirable objective" [530-1, emphasis added]). Why not, indeed, go higher still? Is it not obvious that setting the global tax rate has become a parlor game which any number can play? But whence comes Piketty's confidence that such arbitrary and unprecedented fiddling with the taxes paid by the rich, or relatively rich (always in addition to the taxes they already pay to their domestic governments) can be accomplished without ruin to the national and global economies? Why would the rich submit to it rather than rebel? Why would the people of any nation accept having a significant portion of their country's wealth siphoned off annually to be redistributed around the world by some international authority of uncertain provenance?5 The same apolitical horizon is manifest in the last paragraph of Piketty's chapter proposing a global tax on capital, in which he observes that an international system of forced redistribution through "progressive" taxation will benefit "less developed countries" not only through an enhanced "inflow of foreign aid," but by providing financial data that will enable African nations to "root out" "pillage" by leaders who flee their countries "with ill-gotten gains." Of course, the obstacle to preventing such pillage is not the lack of precise data measuring it, but the lack of a constitutional order that would enforce the rule of law and prevent, or punish, tyrannical behavior in the first place. Piketty even weakens the case for punishing third-world tyrants by asserting (without evidence) that "foreign companies and stockholders of all nationalities are at least as guilty as unscrupulous African elites" in perpetrating such pillage (539).6

How to Eliminate Public Debt - Fast (And Then Resume Accruing It) The global tax on capital is only the first stage in Piketty's proposed assault on the "problem" of economic inequality. In Chapter Sixteen he introduces a new aspect of the issue: the fact that even though "the rich

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world is rich ... the governments of the rich world are poor," as indicated by their high levels of public debt, especially in Europe (540).7 He offers a quick and simple solution to this problem: "an exceptional tax on private capital" to be used to finance the "immediate reimbursement of all outstanding public debt." This measure would be more "civilized" than direct repudiation of part or all of the debt, in that "everyone would be required to contribute," and financial institutions invested in government securities would not suffer, thus preventing "a banking panic and a wave of bankruptcies." But its "main advantage" is that it could be structured progressively, so as to "spare the more modest fortunes and require more of the largest ones." (So not "everyone" would contribute after all) (5423). Hence, in additional to the annually renewed progressive capital tax with rates rising to 2 percent effects or higher "on fortunes larger than 5 million euros," Piketty proposes a one-time "special levy with rates 10 times as high" to yield "one-time receipts of 20 percent of GDP," citing as precedent the progressive capital tax that France imposed in 1945 to "substantially reduce" its debt with rates up to 25 percent (544). (The socalled national solidarity tax instituted in August of that year was an admittedly punitive, one-time imposition designed to compensate for the disparity in the economic effects of the recently ended German occupation on different members of the population, and included "rates up to 100 percent for the largest fortunes" [615 n. 35]. Yet Piketty, exhibiting his dirigiste tendencies, treats it as a model for routine, peacetime debt reduction.) As an alternative means of reducing public indebtedness, Piketty also suggests "a small increase in the inflation rate" from 2 to 5 percent, claiming that "inflation in France and Germany, [which] averaged 13 and 17 percent a year, respectively, from 1913 to 1950 .... allowed both countries to embark on reconstruction efforts in the 1950s with a very small burden of public debt," singling out Germany as "the country that has used inflation most freely (along wgned to equalize the economic effth outright debt repudiation) to eliminate public debt throughout its history" (544-5). He makes onnly brief reference to the ruinous economic, social, and political consequences of Germany's runaway inflation of the 1920's (546), which contributed mightily to Hitler's rise - and none to the widely recognized contribution of West German finance minister Ludwig Erhard's free-market policies to his country's postwar "economic miracle." Closer to home, Piketty does acknowledge the difficulty of halting an "inflationary spiral" once it has begun, observing that "millions of small savers were wiped out" in France by the rampant inflation of 1945-48, which "aggravated the persistent problem of poverty among the elderly in

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the 1950s" - anticipating, I note, the problem faced by American retirees of modest means under the low-interest-rate policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve since 2008. But in the end, while arguing that progressive capital taxes are "generally a better tool than inflation" for decreasing economic inequalities or reducing high levels of public debt, Piketty manages to add a favorable word about the latter: it "penalizes people who do not know what to do with their money," having "kept too much cash in their bank account or stuffed into their mattress," while "spar[ing] those who have already spent everything or invested everything in real economic assets ... and, better still, spares those who are in debt." Inflation's only major disadvantage from Piketty's point of view in the end is that, unlike a progressive capital tax, it fails to prevent "large and well-diversified portfolios from earning a good return" without any "personal effort by the owner" (546-7). Let us reflect on the ethos that Piketty espouses here: thrift and saving are bad; personal indebtedness and risking all one's assets are good. While the value of economic entrepreneurship cannot be denied, are improvidence, extravagance, and excessive risktaking really the attitudes we should encourage among a republican citizenry? Do we want to make people less capable of self-support, more dependent on government largesse (or on wipeouts of their debts, as repeatedly practiced in the operation of his businesses by Donald Trump during his pre-presidential days)? Of such, rather, are the followers of demagogic despots made. But despite his posture as a supporter of "democracy" or self-government, Piketty shows no concern about the formation of the kind of character on which responsible self-government depends. Nor do his proposals in this regard show any more thought about how to promote the genuine interests of "the least well-off," for whom he professes such solicitude (577), than did his proposed policies for alleviating the poverty of less-developed nations. Finally, Piketty nowhere explains the urgency of eliminating Europe's, America's, or the world's entire public debt within five years, especially since he acknowledges the lack of ground for specifying "any particular level of public debt" (566).8 Nor does he express any expectation that European and other governments (just like a chronic debtor who has just been bailed out) would not immediately start incurring new debts that will end up rivaling the old ones. Indeed, observing that (privately held) "national wealth in Europe has never been so high" as it is at present, even though "net public wealth is virtually zero, given the size of the public debt," Piketty denies any need to lament bequeathing "a shameful burden of debt" to our descendants. (He explicitly opposes "engraving untouchable debt and deficit limits in stone in order to thwart future political

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majorities," especially given the proven danger that "constitutional judges" will "interpret" such constraints "in very conservative ways," i.e., stick to the letter of the law [566].) In fact, the only thing Piketty finds "shameful" about Europe's fiscal situation (as of 2013, well into the Greek financial crisis, to which he makes only passing reference [542]) is that its "vast national wealth is very unequally distributed," so that (for instance) "we currently spend far more in interest on the debt than we invest in higher education" (as if the two had anything to do with each other) (566-7). In other words, the "special levy" to eliminate the debt is not intended as a one-time measure. Its purpose is simply to squeeze even more money out of those who Piketty thinks have too much, while clearing the decks for a new round of deficit spending on various domestic projects that will eventually be paid off with another special levy, and so on - while the proportion of national wealth owned by governments keeps rising.9

European (and Global?) Governance and Political Freedom Throughout Piketty's account of his progressive tax on capital, we noted a distinct silence on just who is to collect and administer the proceeds of that tax, which would entail deciding the purposes for which they would be spent, and what populations would receive them. Those goals appeared entirely secondary in Piketty's mind to the sheer aim of reducing the amount of wealth possessed by the rich (or at least the richer). Only towards the end of his chapter on the public debt, in the context of discussing the future of the euro in the light of recent, widely publicized monetary problems in the European Union, does he propose the establishment of a new, international political institution - a European or Eurozone "budgetary parliament" - to address those issues. The new body is needed because the existing European Parliament includes many governments that don't belong to the Eurozone or "wish to pursue further European integration at this time" (559). While Eurozone members have had to cede authority over monetary policy to the European Central Bank, this makes it all the more necessary, Piketty maintains, to "restore their fiscal sovereignty" collectively "over matters no longer within the purview of the nation-state," including not only "the interest rate on public debt" but also "the progressive tax on capital, or the taxation of multinational corporations" (561). Since Piketty never describes any other institution that would administer the proceeds of the taxes he proposes (as well as set the international tax rate), he must intend to assign these responsibilities to the new parliament

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- whose scope, he implies, may ultimately be "global" rather than just continental (561). Yet his account of the structure of this powerful new body, which he explicitly calls "a continental political authority" or "European political union" (562) - as if it were a Europe-wide, not merely Eurozone, authority - is strikingly brief and sketchy. Its relation to the existing, broader European Union is never spelled out. Despite having described its membership as limited to those E.U. members that also belong to the Eurozone, Piketty assigns it the authority of issuing what he calls "a European budget," as if it were empowered to speak for all E.U. members (and perhaps other European nations as well?). He proposes that members of the parliament be drawn "from the ranks of the national parliaments, so that European parliamentary sovereignty would rest on the legitimacy of democratically elected national assemblies," and "decide issues by majority vote after open debate" (559). In a note he suggests that it "might consist of fifty or so members from each of the large Eurozone countries, prorated by population" and "chosen from the financial and social affairs committees of the national parliaments or in some other fashion" (650n28). Does this mean that smaller Eurozone countries would have no representatives? And given wide population disparities even among the largest Eurozone nations, wouldn't proportional representation entail a much wider variation in the size of their delegations than the phrase "fifty or so" implies?10 Considering the broad responsibilities Piketty assigns to the budgetary parliament, its establishment would seem to call for some effort at constitutional design comparable to the enterprise of the American Founders, so as to set limits to its powers and ensure that all members have ground for confidence that their interests are treated fairly. But Piketty displays neither knowledge of nor interest in the problem of constitutional construction. And given the widely recognized problem of legitimacy that characterizes the existing European Union - the so-called "democracy deficit," i.e., the lack of accountability by the European Parliament to voters, few of whom take any interest in the proceedings of such a remote body, and the fact that most important decisions are made by bureaucrats, some of them life-tenured - the notion that even a carefully designed constitutional system given broad continent-wide responsibilities over peoples who speak numerous languages and often have little in common could serve to somehow reassert popular "sovereignty" is farfetched in the extreme.11 In the end, it becomes apparent that despite Piketty's repeated lip service to democracy - e.g., his remark that questions like the proper level of public debt can be decided only by "democratic deliberation ... in keeping

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with the goals each society sets for itself" (562) - he shows no appreciation for constitutionally structured, popular self-government as such. Nor does he see any value in the preservation of national sovereignty - despite professing to believe that "the nation-state is still the right level at which to modernize any number of social and fiscal policies" (573). His vision of "democratic" deliberation is of a process that addresses such questions as the desirable "level of public capital" and "the ideal level of total national capital" (562) - abstract issues that have no objective, knowable overall answer; that neither the generality of citizens nor their elected representatives are qualified to resolve; and at least in the case of the latter query, the government in a free nation has neither the capacity nor the authority to determine. At the same time, for the sake of preventing further international tax competition that would otherwise generate a "race to the bottom" - i.e., a rivalry among independent nations to lower their corporate tax rates so as to attract business investment - Piketty stresses the need for the budgetary parliament to impose a uniform “tax on corporate profits” (560, 562), whatever the wishes of a particular people in this regard.12 (For Piketty, by definition, any lowering of taxes, and hence of the size of government, moves us closer to the bottom; the larger the state, conversely, the closer we come to the "ideal." What's democratic about that?)13 When Piketty speaks of fortifying or extending democracy, what he really means is extending the power of the state at the expense of private rights, not only by confiscating wealth that appears "excessive" to some, but also by authorizing workers to participate in their companies' investment decisions; government to decide how the wealth produced by a mine should be "divided between profits and wages," etc., all in the name of "economic democracy" (570 [emphasis added]). Under the banner of economic democracy, it is intellectuals like Piketty, along with their bureaucratic allies, who would really be calling the shots and running the show, political as well as economic.14 Piketty's "global" solutions to the problems he thinks he has articulated exemplify what the distinguished French political theorist Pierre Manent has identified as the vision typical of the contemporary, continental European intellectual class (as well as its North American sympathizers): a "democracy without nations" in "a world beyond politics."15 Contrary to Piketty's intention, Part IV of CITC serves only to confirm the essential linkage among national sovereignty, constitutional self-government, and individual rights.

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Notes 1

The present essay is a revised version of a paper presented at the 2016 meeting of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Lodz, Poland. The author wishes to thank the Charles G. Koch Foundation for its support of this research. 2 Trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Despite having attracted far less notice when it was published in France a year earlier, and having been found by one measure to be the "most unread" of recent bestsellers during the two months it spent on the New York Times bestseller list (Jordan Ellenberg, “The Summer’s Most Unread Book Is …,” Wall Street Journal, July 5-6 2014, C3), by the spring of 2015 CITC was reported to have sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, having been translated into several languages. 3 I offer a more comprehensive critique of Piketty's argument in "Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Economic Analysis or Tract for the Times?," Perspectives on Political Science, 46.1 (January-March, 2017), 16-29. 4 The enormous contribution that economic freedom, reflecting a changed estimation of the "bourgeois" way of life, has made to the transformation in living standards of the vast majority of people has been brilliantly expounded by economic historian Deirdre McCloskey in her trilogy Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2006), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (2010), and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016; all published by the University of Chicago Press). As University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax suggests, even though recent polls report that a majority of Americans now view economic inequality as "a problem in itself," this may be so largely because they think it a damper on socioeconomic mobility - when actual reductions in such mobility have deeper sources than income, notably differences in family structure, mores, criminality, and educational attainment ("Educating the Disadvantaged," National Affairs, 31 [Spring, 2017], 3). 5 Then again, Piketty does not appear to rely entirely on the hope of voluntary compliance to bring about such redistributions, since he points out - in the context of advocating an international "redistribution of petroleum rents" - that the successful use of force to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991 offers "proof, if proof were needed, that governments can mobilize impressive resources to enforce their decisions when they choose to do so" (537). While he favors an "international norm" that would "prevent redistribution of wealth by force insofar as it is possible to do so," the norm would entail an "obligation to find other ways to achieve a more just distribution of petroleum rents" by such means as "sanctions, taxes [imposed and enforced by whom?], or foreign aid" to enable "countries without oil the opportunity to develop" (538). He offers no explanation of how such oil-less nations as Japan, Israel, and the "Asian tigers" have managed to prosper in the postwar world without reliance on such devices. (Cf. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 20.5.)

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6 Piketty purports to illustrate how less-developed countries currently suffer from the lack of a "just and transparent international tax system" by observing that "in Africa, the outflow of capital has always exceeded the inflow of foreign aid by a wide margin" (535). But why does he compare capital outflows only with the amount of foreign aid received, rather than with capital inflows stemming from private foreign investment - which studies by such scholars as Dambisa Moyo and Peter Bauer have demonstrated is far more effective (along with the removal of trade barriers to exports from poorer nations) than foreign aid can ever be in raising third-world living standards, without having the effect of propping up tyrannical governments? (See Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009]; Bauer, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981]; also William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good [New York: Penguin Press, 2006].) 7 To get an idea of how "poor" government is in France, consider that a major deterrent to business hiring in that country is the requirement that worker salaries be supplemented with social security taxes that can add as much as 50 percent to the cost of employment - a considerable obstacle (along with extensive legal restrictions on employee dismissals) to combating the country's youth unemployment rate of over 20 percent (Alissa J. Rubin, "To Understand Macron's Economic Vision, Look to the 'Last Chance' Students," New York Times, May 6, 2017, A7). 8 As most economists and economic historians know, a moderate level of public debt can actually benefit a polity. See John Steele Gordon, Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt (New York: Walker and Co., 2010). 9 Government spending in the then-28 E.U. nations hit a historic high in 2009 of nearly 50% of gross domestic product, although it subsided - doubtless to Piketty's chagrin - to "only" 46% by 2017 (Ruchir Sharma, "The Economic Winds Are at Europe's Back," Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2017, A17). Of course Europe's NATO members (most of which also belong to the E.U.) continue to spend a substantially smaller fraction of their GNP than the U.S. does on defense, leaving a still higher percentage of their budgets available for "social" spending. 10 For further analysis of the structural problems in the proposal, see Donald R. Brand, "Thomas Piketty’s Global Tax on Wealth," Perspectives on Political Science, 46.1 (January-March, 2017), 2-10. 11 A sympathetic journalistic account of the E.U. in the wake of Britain's 2016 vote to withdraw from it acknowledged that even though its legislature is elected, "the union is in many ways a technocracy first," "designed to be an institution that allows experts to make the best decisions possible, simultaneously rising above and defusing nationalist [i.e., national] politics." See Amanda Taub, "Why the E.U. Lacks the Feel of Democracy," New York Times, June 30, 2016, A6. Two days later, the Times quoted the Europe director of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, explaining the rise of Austrian far-right populist Norbert Hofer (who

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subsequently lost his country's presidential election by a relatively narrow margin) as reflective of a similar view that power “needs to be rebalanced toward [national] capitals," reflecting “a tremendous desire from all over Europe to win back autonomy and sovereignty from Brussels that is motivated by how out of touch the E.U. has become with the everyday fears and concerns of its citizens” (“Austrian Court Orders Repeat of Presidential Runoff, Citing Irregularities in Count,” New York Times, July 2, 2016, A9). For a subsequent update on the E.U.'s growing problems, resulting partly from the unchecked, continued tendency towards "overregulation of everyday life" by "unelected bureaucrats" and the disregard of national referenda opposing its extension, see Steven Erlanger, "Divided E.U. Turns 60 With Little to Celebrate," New York Times, March 25, 2017, A16. For a comprehensive critique of the E.U.'s "global governance" agenda as antithetical to constitutional self-government, see Todd Huizinga, The New Totalitarian Temptation: Global Governance and the Crisis of Democracy in Europe (New York: Encounter Books, 2016). 12 Contrast Deirdre McCloskey's account of the so-called "Tiebout Effect" of "qualitatively varied" political jurisdictions competing for skilled workers in 17thcentury Holland by offering guarantees of religious toleration, which she connects to the finding of William McNeill and other historians that the broad economic advance of Europe over recent centuries, in contrast to the static condition of the Ottoman and Chinese empires during the same period, was due to the continent's "political fragmentation," which prevented (in McNeill's words) "the takeover of mercantile wealth by bureaucratic authority" as practiced by Chinese, Mughal, and Ottoman officials. She properly expresses concern that this competition is now threatened today by "EU rules ... standardizing chocolate and cheese" as well as by American federal bureaucrats (McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, 351, 396-7; cf. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 21.5, first paragraph). Piketty's proposals would take the world much farther in this antiliberal direction - ironically, in harmony with the anti-immigration, anti-free trade policies espoused by Donald Trump: if nations shouldn't be allowed to compete for capital through lower taxes, why allow them to compete for skilled workers at the expense of the workers' homelands? (Of course in the past Europe's political fragmentation had grave noneconomic consequences - but these were ultimately overcome by the establishment of NATO and related postwar arrangements, which were fully compatible, unlike the Chinese and Ottoman systems, with the maintenance of political autonomy and economic freedom.) On the exodus of France's "best and brightest" to countries like the U.S. and U.K. in recent years to escape burdensome taxation, see Sohrab Ahmari, "Le Pen, Mélenchon and the French Illusions that Die Hard," Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2017, A15. See also, on the threat of proposed E.U. regulations (banning kosher slaughtering and infant circumcision) to the survival of Judaism in Europe, Shalom Carmy, "Babel and Brexit," First Things, no. 274 (July-August, 2017), 17. And see the next note. 13 The spirit, though of course not the letter, of Piketty's wish to prevent nations from opting out of his high-tax agenda recalls the rationale that Albert Nordon, the head of East Germany's "security" office, offered to justify the order to shoot

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anyone attempting to escape the Communist paradise by somehow passing over or around the Berlin Wall: each such shooting, he asserted, would "save" the wellbeing of thousands of citizens of the so-called German Democratic Republic, along with millions of deutschmarks in national wealth, "thereby upholding the "power of the people." (Quotation posted on a plaque at the memorial to the victims of those shootings, read by the author on a visit to Berlin in July, 2016.) Piketty doesn't propose to make war on nations that lower corporate or personal taxes; he just relies on the power of "persuasion" by transnational bodies, hardly more accountable to the people than the East German regime was, to bring about the desired result. (But see note 5 supra.) 14 In his disparagement of the actual, constitutional-democratic political process in favor of imposing "just" policies by fiat, Piketty follows the lead of one of his acknowledged role models, the late American philosophy professor John Rawls (see 480; 630-1 nn. 21-22). For a critique, see my Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007). 15 Manent, A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, trans. Marc LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Democracy without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe, trans. Paul Seaton (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2007). See also Huizinga, The New Totalitarian Temptation, and, on the link between the attempted subsumption of national sovereignty under "global" government and the rise of the "populist" right exemplified by Marine le Pen's National Front in France, Manent, "Populist Demagogy and the Fanaticism of the Center," American Affairs I.2 (Summer, 2017), 9–18.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN BEYOND NATURE AND NECESSITY: THE ENNOBLING OF DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EMMA PLANINC

Wistfully following their example, nature re-enters herself; contemplating its own sap, the flower becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens. . . . It’s the return of all desire that enters toward all life embracing itself from afar. . . . Where does it fall? Under the dwindling surface, does it hope to renew a center? —Narcisse, Rilke

In The Ennobling of Democracy, Thomas Pangle diagnosed a “growing emptiness and isolation of existence” in the American youth.1 Stemming from the postmodern impulse to free oneself from “permanent hierarchical relations,” and having accepted as naïve “the idea that nature should or could provide the fixed standard for human existence,” the commitment to human rights or any principled basis of political community, Pangle claims, is blurred and ambiguous.2 Riding the coattails of Heidegger and Nietzsche3, the civic collectivity—and the soul of the American people— is threatened by “a bloodless and philistine relativism that saps the will and the capacity to defend or define any principled basis of life.”4 Pangle begins Ennobling with an account of the current state of postmodern thought: its Heideggerian roots, the weakness of its thinking, and its American instantiations. He then moves on to both establish the European moral roots of the United States and, simultaneously, to attempt a resurrection of a foundation from which an updated classical republicanism

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could be reinvigorated. Following on a liberal tradition and the emphasis on “mass enlightenment” that occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Pangle seems to suggest that it is now an inescapable facet of political life that there be an emphasis on mass education and individualism, and his attempt is one that seeks to move away from a “banalization of existence” and a “shrinking of the spirit” while remaining within these founding principles and parameters, threatened more and more by postmodern relativism.5 The concluding sections of the book, however, turn their focus toward a very specific and specified mode of ‘liberal arts’ education, inspired by a kind of Socratic dialectic and taking the form of a ‘Great Books’ program. The “great tradition” that must be preserved in this education is one that stretches “from Socrates to Nietzsche [and] is not a set of doctrines but a series of great debates around a small core of permanent questions.”6 Here Pangle implores students to challenge society’s most commonly held opinions; “to encounter disquieting critics of democracy and human rights.”7 Pangle writes that “at the heart of good humanity . . . is loyalty to the truth and virtue grounded in nature, in what is right by nature, or in the unfinished quest for the truth about human nature.”8 There thus appears to be a tension between the attempt to Ennoble the principles of the American democratic state, and the attempt to establish an education that would embrace—in looking toward ‘good humanity’— its most discomforting critics, who are loyal to what is true by nature rather than what is accepted by convention. Pangle draws out this tension in discussing the Socratic ‘gadfly’ and his position in relation to the potentially opposed figures of the ‘good human being’ and the ‘loyal citizen’: “the citizen striving to be a good human being, precisely because of a qualified loyalty to the existing regime, may be a better friend to that regime, if it is a decent regime, than its most passionate supporters. The good human being strives to correct or improve the regime, and not merely in light of a standard provided by the regime. The good human being, one may say, strives to be a kind of conscience or gadfly to the regime in which he finds himself, and to which he is naturally attached—but with a reasonable, because reasoned, love” Pangle also writes, citing Aristotle, that the “good or serious human being will only rarely, if ever, be simply a loyal citizen. For the virtue of the serious citizen, in contrast to that of the good human being, is a relative virtue.”9 The primary question—if one is to remain loyal to the book’s title—is thus whether or not Pangle is, indeed, more concerned with Ennobling Democracy or with compelling good students to pursue a liberal arts education that may turn them away from the very foundational principles

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Pangle seeks to resurrect. Put another way, the ennobling of the role of natural right relative to the American state and the assertion that “nature provides a fixed standard for human existence” may be fundamentally irreconcilable with what is “at the heart of good humanity”: the quest for what is true about human nature in non-relative terms.10 This is not to say that both cannot be ennobled simultaneously, but it does appear that there is a dual educational program at work: on the one hand, to take postmodern relativism out of the minds of loyal citizens, and on the other to—in fact— make good students more postmodern insofar as they ought to be compelled to question the given and principled foundations of their lives. We should not, Pangle writes, “equate truth with our own political ideology.”11 This, I argue, is the driving thesis of the book: that postmodern thought is not wrong, but dangerous, and that its spokespersons are both inadequate in not being sufficiently Socratic and attempting to perform an enlightening mass education on those who would be better suited to a loyal, solid, and principled mode of civic existence. In this respect too Pangle’s target audience is not really the lost democratic youth of America, but their misguided educators. It may seem odd to claim that Pangle is at root an advocate of postmodern thinking (and certainly this does not mean that he is an advocate of either postmodern thought or of postmodern thinkers), and this claim has its roots in two observations upon which I will elaborate in this chapter: firstly, Pangle’s introduction to postmodernism in Ennobling establishes three dichotomies or pairings that are essential to the criticisms of education that persist throughout the book: a) strong versus weak thinking; b) infantilism or childhood versus maturation; and c) aesthetics versus truth. Secondly—and more importantly—both Pangle’s conception of civic loyalty and his conception of the proper liberal arts education depend on some conception of nature: for loyal citizens, there must be an ennobled sense of natural right coupled with concern for the common good, and for loyal truth-seekers there must be a “quest for what Nietzsche still calls, following Socrates, ‘the natural’, ‘the eternal’, ‘the eternal basic text of natural man.’”12 What most ennobles the human spirit, then, is a rich dialectical questioning of the very foundation of natural right and of human rights in search of the true text of natural man. Drawing on the dichotomies established in the chapters about postmodernism, it becomes evident that this is not a task for the weak, but it also demands a lack of “strong impositions” of rationalized and definitive ideologies;13 it is a task only for mature thinkers, but must also be a child-like activity of exploration and self-exploration for (although Pangle does not quote this directly) “no forced study abides in soul . . .

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Therefore, you best of men . . .don’t use force in training the children in the studies, but rather play”;14 and it is a quest for truth that navigates the Scylla and Charybdis of a spiritually empty cosmopolitan individualism on the one hand, and the aesthetic, fascistic and terrifying modern consequences of Nietzsche’s political thought on the other.15 This is a quest not for the many, but for few; and they are the few that will perceive not only the challenge of the ‘postmodern’ philosophers’ “most sinister” great books,16 but also these thinkers’ terrifying—perhaps terrifyingly correct— assertions that the only “distinctions available” to people of the state are those defined by the state, and these “suffice for the needs of political reflection.”17 As Pangle writes, the “highest reasonable goal of political communication must be, not truth simply, but true opinion.”18 The state is, indeed, an aesthetic enterprise. Postmodernism reveals this truth to the masses, and the consequence is a Babel of relativism which Pangle diagnoses as deleterious to both civic life and the human soul. Pangle’s solution, however, of reinvigorating a natural genesis—or a fixed standard of nature—is even less tenable than it was upon Ennobling’s initial publication. Postmodernism has gone even further. Having recognized the construction of social life, thinkers are now recognizing the construction of the human in relation to the rest of nature.19 That is, questions are being more forcefully asked about why the human being ought to be privileged at all; about why rationality is so superior anyhow; about how humans can really be said to be anything other than a natural creation, another species among all species of animals. Put another way, the call to reinvigorate a sense of natural right or natural dignity can no longer serve as a counterpoint to the relativism afflicting the youth and their mentors. Having now agreed that “nature should or could provide the fixed standard for human existence,” 20 postmodern thinkers have turned to accepting that nature provides a standard for all existence, including non-human animals, and that these ‘natural’ commonalities ought to serve as more correct accounts of justice or moral community than those which privilege an all-too-human sense of superiority. Is this denial of human superiority itself an instantiation of a “loyalty to the truth and virtue grounded in nature, in what is right by nature, or in the unfinished quest for the truth about human nature”?21 Is this indeed, as in Pangle’s citation of John Adams, teaching men to “reverence themselves”? 22 Perhaps the truth about human nature is that it is— precisely—unfounded. And perhaps it is the case that democracy cannot be Ennobled out of this condition. Postmodern thought, now in embracing rather than rejecting (or accepting as naïve) a natural standard, is

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simultaneously more destructive than it was at the time of Ennobling’s publication, and, perhaps, even more correct. Much more than in 1992, politics may need to remain tenuously loyal, as was Richard Rorty, to that which denies a natural standard, and which embraces the political and aesthetic sphere as its own. *** Pangle’s initial discussion of postmodern thought establishes three driving dichotomies that persist and establish the thematic thrust of the rest of the work: strong versus weak thinking, infantilism or childhood versus maturity or maturation, and aesthetics versus truth. Pangle claims that the trend is now toward a ‘weak’ mode of thinking, or a ‘weak aesthetic’ given the reaction against the strong and tyrannical politics and aesthetic of Nazi Germany. Lyotard’s “tirades against the hegemonic character of rationalism”23 are indicative of the blossoming tendency to embrace a kind of relativism in light of the dogmatic and fascistic tendencies of rational thought: The ‘weak thinkers’ refuse the invitation Heidegger extends to join him in his vague longings and waitings for cataclysmic cultural revolution, but they accept Heidegger’s overthrow of pre-Heideggerian philosophy, religion and art . . .The ‘weak thinkers’ remain morally committed to a vaguely anarchistic democratism, simultaneously warning us of the exclusivistic tendencies of moral dogmatism, of the danger that standards can lead to oppressive hierarchies.24

These postmodern thinkers, Pangle claims, celebrate their incapacity to draw distinctions and cultivate “a climate of moral vacillation.” 25 Their embrace of this weak thinking is in one way justified, given the “totalitarian temptations” of strong impositions;26 but in another, Pangle suggests, their vitriol is misdirected in being pointed toward not only modern rationalism but also classical rationalism. This dichotomy, as construed thus far, casts weakness as a bad mode of thought in relation—it would seem—to the comparably more justifiable (while perhaps more dangerous) mode of strong thinking which dares to draw non-relative distinctions in the world. This kind of daring was present in, for example, Classical Athens, when there were distinctions made that did not allow for moral vacillation despite probing (in the best case in the figure of Socrates) for the truth. More deleterious, it seems, is the fact that this weak thinking resists the authority of “traditional texts, whether legal, literary, philosophic or religious.”27 Citing Gianni Vattimo, Pangle claims that it is impossible for the postmodern thinker to even

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recognize the challenge of the “‘radical otherness’ of another age or culture”, and “even the texts belonging to our own tradition, the ‘classics’ in the literal sense of the word, by which we have always before measured our humanity, progressively lose their cogency as models and thus become part of the vast construction site of residual rubble [Vattimo 1987, 169].”28 The openness to all modes of thought restricts the possibility of making any definitive—or strong—claim about what is or could be seen as ennobling to society or to the human being: a weak relativity rules all things. This dichotomy of strength versus weakness is, however, more complicated than it first appears. In fact, the most relevant category it would seem is the assertion of a ‘strong weakness’ which appears in two forms. The first appears in the work of Richard Rorty. Rortyian liberalism, Pangle writes, is self-consciously impervious to outside criticism: “Rorty adopts as his own Joseph Schumpter’s famous remark that ‘to realize the relative validity of one’s convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.” 29 That is, Rorty’s position is one that couples a ‘weak thinking’ (in recognizing the relativity of society’s values) with a strong imposition for the sake of social cohesion and solidity. In Pangle’s words, “recoiling from the antidemocratic and antiliberal implications of Heidegger and Lyotard, Rorty has sought shelter in a marriage of Heidegger and John Dewey” 30 —an odd coupling that nevertheless brokers a middle way between the dangers of fascistic strong impositions and the weak postmodernism that would shy away from asserting any moral or political value. From the point of view of the postmodern pragmatist, Rorty claims, you cannot, it is true, maintain the Greek distinction between rhetoric and logic; that is, one cannot in fact distinguish between truth and political assertion or persuasion. What one is left with is an open acknowledgment that politics is the sphere of persuasion, and the only distinctions available to you are those between the presence or absence of mechanisms of social and political life within the state—“and these symptoms suffice for political reflection.” 31 The strong weakness here is thus that the artifice of the state is acknowledged and accepted (and especially the artifices required for the preservation of democratic life) in tandem with the underlying potential relativity of all things.32 There is, however, a second sense of ‘strong weakness’ that Pangle discusses: a Heideggerian weakness that needs to be freed from “Heidegger’s own longings for a ‘strong’ time, a time of ‘strength.’”33 It is a mode of thinking in which “we see negatively the vicious residue of rationalism, monotheism, and metaphysics” and positively we can only see

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with weak eyes that perceive the “weakness of Being”34: “this ‘seeing’ that we have is Being’s becoming present for us, in this time. Our time is in a sense privileged, by the ‘end of history’ insight—but we lose that privilege the moment we forget that our time, too, is somehow enshrouded, in ways that we cannot see.”35 It is an acknowledgment that there are givens that are not given to us; and the strong weakness here would be a receptivity to exploring truths (or Being) without the attempt to impose them through political strength. It is a philosophical weakness that is itself a strength: a strength of character and of perception that, Pangle writes, can be seen as a kind of ‘maturation’. This is the transition into the second of the ‘postmodern dichotomies’: childhood (or infantilism) versus maturation. Here too the dichotomy can be presented both in a simplistic and more complex form. Pangle regularly describes postmodern thought as infantile or childish, and has some fun with Jean-François Lyotard’s ‘Postmodernism for the Children.’ Refracting his criticism of postmodernism through an account of the avant-garde, Pangle first discusses the ‘rational infantilism’ (relating this also to Alexandre Kojève) of those who play games with categories and who see the world as self-satisfied playground of exploration and manipulation: Twentieth-century avant-garde art finds its spiritual satisfaction in the given work, as not pointing or looking beyond itself, as the expression of the satisfied rational self-consciousness at play in a world in which it is principally at home. This play, to be sure, is no longer ‘human’: it knows no serious anguish, longing, moral struggle, overcoming or possibility of tragedy. For ‘History’ as ‘Negation’, or as ‘human action’, history as dynamic contradiction between conflicting ‘causes’ or conceptions of justice, is finished.36

Lyotard sees himself as rebelling against this account, resting on a postmodern avant-garde that attempts to resuscitate a Kantian sense of the sublime; of art representing that which is unrepresentable. As Pangle writes, “the postmodern aesthetic experience is of ‘ontological dislocation’: the threat of meaninglessness, emptiness, nothingness is evoked and countered—but by less and less. For every convention, rule, or category inherited from traditional art must be subjected to questioning and experimentation.”37 In a fine example of Lyotard’s postmodern language, Pangle cites from Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants: It must be made clear that it is not for us to furnish a reality, but rather to invent allusions to the conceivable that cannot be presented. And one cannot expect from this attempt the least reconciliation between the ‘language games.’ . . . Our response is war against everything, bearing

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witness to the unpresentable, activating the differences, saving the honour of the name.38

It is clear that Lyotard has not rebelled against Kojève’s accounting of the avant-garde; indeed, he has taken infantilism to an even further instantiation: postmodernism is for children. Life is a game that, on Lyotard’s account, shows no reverence for that which it claims to see as sublime. Postmodernism takes as its starting point the unaccountability of the world, or the ‘real,’ and thus sees human life—both artistic and political—as a childlike experiential theme park. It is, like a child, incapable of drawing distinctions for itself and takes this as its most valorous quality. Offering a counter-point to this infantilism or childishness is John Locke. Indeed, Pangle’s account of Locke’s educational program, when held in opposition to the childishness of postmodernism, gets at the core thesis of Pangle’s attempt to ennoble the American democratic state out of its slip into relativism. Pangle writes: “both Locke and the classical republican philosophers had stressed the absolute importance of early childhood moral education.”39 In what and how must they be educated? Pangle wants to re-invigorate the early modern emphasis on natural right through reminding Americans of their universal passions and their universal needs40: natural rights “are the direct rational expressions of the basic passions”, and “natural duties and laws are defined as those imperatives that dictate the best means to the securing and promotion of natural rights, and above all the right to secure or comfortable selfpreservation.” 41 Locke goes further in enunciating the “selfish and domineering passions among all men by nature” through a description of the characteristics of children: I told you before that Children love Liberty; . . . I now tell you they love something more and that is Dominion: And this is the first original of the most vicious habits, that are ordinary and natural . . . they shew their love of Dominion, [in] their desire to have things be theirs; they would have Propriety and Possession, pleasing themselves with the Power which that seems to give.42

By nature, then, children love both dominion and liberty, and both must be respected and protected in the state. But the proper exercising of these natural rights and passions does not itself come naturally, but by habituation. Noah Webster put this clearly in his “On the Education of Youth in America”: educators should be enabled “to implant in the tender mind such sentiments of virtue, propriety and dignity as are suited to the freedom of our governments. Children should be treated as children, but as

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children that are in a future time to be men and women.” 43 Put more generally, then, the counterpoint to the postmodern celebration of a boundless childishness is the bounded childhood that looks always toward a future maturation. The solidity of the state, in addition, comes from grounding the need for this maturation in both nature and necessity: men must be taught that their natures are such that they require bounded communities for the sake of their own efflorescence and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires (which, it seems, are restricted to bounded conceptions of liberty and dominion, or freedom and acquisition). There is a maturity in recognizing that one’s flourishing requires existence within a political authority. This maturity is not a celebration of a ‘childish’ unbounded liberty, but a political existence grounded both in the “simple principles of nature” and a remarkable sense of self-identity on the part of the citizens. 44 Loyal citizens must see themselves reflected in their state, and this requires a robust articulation and “clear conception of humanity.”45 The call back to ‘classical republicanism’, however, demands that one acknowledge that civic “virtue is not natural; rather, it is dependent on early childhood habituation, which requires as lifelong support the coercive, awe-inspiring, and frightening authority of the law.”46 The founders, Pangle writes, “tried to instill reverence for constitutional law and tradition, while insisting that that the law could only draw legitimacy from its service to the welfare of individuals. They assumed the names of Plutarchian heroes as pen names, while deploring and distancing themselves from the decisive aristocratic dimension of Plutarchian republicanism.” 47 The founding dualities of revelation and philosophic reason, rights and republicanism, and wisdom and consent are being sapped from the American ethos, leading to the banalization of citizens’ political existence. 48 What is required is a rehabituation, a refounding, an ennobling, for the sake of the preservation of the American democratic state. Pangle writes that “we need to swing the pendulum back from a notion of liberty that becomes harder and harder to distinguish from license”49; put otherwise, we must stop celebrating the infantile desire to boundlessly shy away from making distinctions or claims about humanity and political life, and move toward a conception of the state that takes its children and sees them mature into loyal republican citizens. This, however, is not at all the same sense of maturity as was recounted above. The Heideggerian maturity (a strong weakness) is one that in its own way denies concrete impositions or distinctions. It remains open to the philosophic exploration of Being and perceives the dangers of definitive, rationalist and political impositions. Held in tandem with

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Pangle’s account of the necessity of employing Socratic dialectic in liberal arts institutions, this second type of maturity is more aptly understood as a ‘mature childishness’. The philosophic dialectician remains open to perspectives that are not given to him in his particular time or place: “liberal education in its highest and fullest sense is the education that truly liberates; and Socrates calls such an education philosophy.”50 Dialectic is a method through which we encounter disquieting criticisms of our conventions, laws and commonly held beliefs; it is a bracing confrontation with the principles we take to be grounded and founded. The symptom of a truly operable liberal education of this sort, Pangle claims, is “our initial anger or moral indignation at the worldview we have encountered: for that indignation is a sign that we have run up against a real challenge, one that does not fit with out accepted notions of what is right.”51 It is, as Socrates recounts in the Republic, a liberation from one’s upbringing, for we “have convictions from our childhood about just and noble things, convictions under which we are brought up as if under parents, obeying them as rulers and honouring them” which we may find, upon dialectical investigation, are incorrect or unfounded.52 Philosophy is a potential resistance to the social or political maturation that is expected of you; you become again like a child, consciously lacking or abandoning distinctions in view of reforming them through dialectical reflection. This too is a type of mature play; as Plato writes, “no forced study abides in soul . . . Therefore, you best of men . . .don’t use force in training the children in the studies, but rather play.”53 It is an activity not to be taken lightly, nor is it for the weak: philosophy, practiced correctly, requires a strength of character to encounter the possibility that all that you have perceived or been taught is not noble, just or good. How then are we to reconcile these seemingly contradictory assertions? We have on one hand a call to strengthen the principles of nature and necessity against the weak thinking of postmodern relativism; to mature the citizens of a state through an education in natural right, foundationalism and republican liberty. On the other hand, there is a call to educators to encourage this much more amorphous character—the ‘mature child’—that can resist the dogmatic assertions about right and human nature provided by her ‘parents’. They may, in fact, be reconcilable. Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, Pangle writes: Plato and Aristotle were convinced that all societies – even, or especially, healthy republics – are necessarily closed. Every society will have certain fundamental sanctities or moral absolutes whose doubt is truly upsetting to that society, and that a responsible philosopher will in public treat with the greatest caution. The Socratics held that for the good of both civic virtue

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Pangle, thus, is claiming that democracy must be ennobled based on principles that are at best suspect; not only are unquestioned civic principles by definition assumed to be false until probed under intense philosophic scrutiny, but certainly any dogmatic foundation of civic life grounded in a conception of nature is to be treated with extreme skepticism by the philosophic soul. Democracy is to be ennobled based on principles that may not survive philosophic scrutiny. As Pangle writes: “the question of nature, of human nature and its place in the larger whole of nature, is indeed the question of questions.”55 The philosophic journey is one that—in opposition to strong impositions—takes the Nietzschean call seriously; to investigate against all nomoi and “following Socrates, ‘the natural’, ‘the eternal’, ‘the eternal basic text of natural man.’”56 These are questions and investigations, not answers and assertions. Indeed, even after all of the Great Books have been written and read, the question of ‘the natural’ can remain always and only the questioning of what is potentially unknowable. What is most astounding is that this claim is identically articulated in the postmodern project as construed in Pangle’s account. The striking similarity occurs in the work of Richard Rorty (here recalling Rorty’s ‘strong weakness’ discussed above). Like Plato and Aristotle, Rorty conceives of the state as a ‘closed society’ with rules governing what “suffice[s] for the needs of political reflection.” 57 That is, Rorty’s pragmatism about the needs of the state does in one way support Pangle’s assertion that the “highest reasonable goal of political communication must be, not truth simply, but true opinion.”58 The reassertion of natural right in view of ennobling the American democratic state is an act of pragmatism; re-establishing a foundation that will, precisely, suffice for the needs of the solidity of the state and the needs of good political reflection. It is to be a closed system in which the American people see themselves—their liberties and necessities—reflected in the legal and constitutional structures of the state. Rorty too, however, acknowledges that there is a fundamental distinction between these social or political necessities and the challenges posed by philosophical reflection. He is especially attuned to the challenges posed by contemporary (in Pangle’s words, ‘sinister’) philosophers: “‘the best one can do with the sort of challenges offered by Nietzsche and Heidegger’ is ‘ask these men to

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privatize their projects, their attempts at sublimity—to view them as irrelevant to politics.’” 59 Here the ‘strong weakness’ of Rorty and Heidegger come together, and fuse with Pangle’s project of establishing a distinction between that which is politically necessary, and that which is privately and philosophically challenging. Like Pangle, Rorty endorses the view that the preservation of the principles of “the Enlightenment is our best hope.” 60 Unlike Pangle, however, Rorty wishes to detach these Enlightenment principles from a foundation in nature, to “cut the links which connect those values with the image of the Mirror of Nature.” 61 Rorty’s division of artifice from the invocation of nature is essential to his ‘strong weakness,’ or his capacity to maintain both an assertion that the state is built purely on politically necessary principles of self-sufficiency and also his claim that there remains, lurking under the surface, a fundamental unknowability or relativity to all things. Pangle’s counter-argument is that the state’s artifice must in fact be founded on principles of nature to be convincing; or, at the very least, must in fact be founded on true opinions about the principles of human nature to be politically useful. While both Pangle and Rorty acknowledge the fundamental artifice of the state, Pangle is, in short, an advocate of Plato’s noble lie—and the entire educational program that must come with it—while Rorty is not. Pangle sees the danger inherent in the postmodern realization, and especially in its popularization, that conventions and the “certain fundamental sanctities or moral absolutes” so necessary to the state are open to question. 62 The questioning of these ‘moral absolutes’ is a dangerous enterprise, for, as Socrates states: The question is put to someone “’what is the noble?’—and, when he answers what he heard from the lawgiver, the rational argument refutes him, and this refutation is repeated often and in many ways, he falls into the opinion that nothing is any more noble than base; and the same happens regarding the just and the good and the matters he especially held in honour.”63

This aporetic and disturbing state of philosophic dialectic is not to be taken lightly, for it can lead either to philosophic insight or terrible tyrannical imposition out of the license of seeing all values as up for debate or renegotiation. At the heart of this enterprise ought to be a loyalty to the truth about “what is right by nature, or [to] the unfinished quest for the truth about human nature.” 64 To have a society of loyal citizens believing that the truth about human nature is open to question (as the postmodern citizenry would, on Pangle’s view) is tenuous, made more so

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by the open acknowledgment that the state is built purely on artificial constructs. Postmodernism is, in this respect, too close to the truth about political communities. For the postmoderns of Ennobling, artifice is all that can be known, and thus asserted, about human existence; an Ennobling of nature—of what can be known by nature—is for Pangle both politically and philosophically necessary to combat the isolation and emptiness of the contemporary condition. The reinvigoration of the state based upon natural right, will, according to Pangle, reorient postmodern relativism and isolation away from its embrace of artifice and toward a grounded and principled existence in both the public and private spheres. Resting this ennobling on a reinvigorated sense of nature and natural right is, however, now substantially more problematic than it was in 1992. Joanna Bourke has asserted the “unknowability of all animals, including human ones,”65 and Helena Pederson has questioned “the fantasy of propagating the human as the rational, autonomous, self-determining subject par excellence, in possession of at least some presumably universal traits and qualities . . . [which will turn out] as little more than an historical parenthesis.” 66 Reflecting a trend that seeks to cast doubt or skepticism on the identity of the human being as distinct or superior, Bourke and Pederson, like others, move to establish a commonality of the human being with other living things based on a non-rational foundation in naturally shared traits or belonging. Terence Ball has called for a ‘biocracy’—a “transgeneration and transspecies representative democracy” that would involve “future people, animals, and ecosystems” 67 —and John Dryzek for an ‘ecological democracy.’ 68 Far from rejecting as naïve the idea that nature ought to provide a fixed standard for existence, these theorists “represent a new kind of normative turn to nature in political theory.”69 Also drawing on Richard Dagger and Bruno Latour (whose ‘new constitution’ would involve human and non-human ‘actants’), Crina Archer, Laura Ephraim and Lida Maxwell argue that nature is now invoked as an ideal “basis for a new standard of stewardship for representative democracy: the good polity, the[se theorists] suggest, is one in which nature’s interests are given voice and represented, securing both nature and politics against corruption.”70 In Wild Justice, Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce also argue that “new information that’s accumulating daily is blasting away perceived boundaries between human and animals . . . Animals not only have a sense of justice, but also a sense of empathy, forgiveness, trust, reciprocity and much more.” 71 Morality, “including justice,” they claim, is not about abstractions; rather, as Robert Solomon argues in his A Passion for

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Justice, “Justice presumes a personal concern for others. It is first of all a sense, not a rational or social construction, and . . . this sense is, in an important sense, natural.”72 In his recent Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner has appealed to an “ideal of cosmic justice.”73 “The imperative of cosmic justice is one that requires a Herculean effort of us: to look past ourselves and see ourselves as part of a larger cosmic whole that in recent generations has, incorrectly in my judgment, been dismissed as merely an immanent product of human discourse . . . rather than being seen as the living measure of our own self-understanding and the ultimate source of any authentic conception of justice.” 74 Steiner’s ‘nonanthropocentric cosmopolitanism’ is, he claims, a revision of the Greek doctrine of oikeosis, or kinship with, or love of, one’s own. Normally discussed in relation to the love or care one has for those with whom one is close (both politically, in sharing the polis, or in the love one has for kindred souls [see, for example, Plato’s Lysis]), Steiner opts for what he calls the “highest level of oikeiosis”—a “corollary of cosmic holism according to which we are bound in an essential kinship relation with all beings that suffer and struggle to realize their natural potential.” 75 This kinship is thus, for Steiner, natural and transhistorical—it is a cosmic attachment to all beings that exist by and in nature. Steiner writes that “our conception of the natural order underlies and ultimately determines our sense of moral connectedness” to the rest of the natural kingdom. 76 It is therefore the goal of current postmodern theorists to articulate, rather than deny, a foundational (and indeed timeless) account of nature that can be used to both criticize and reform current practice and politics. This return to nature is also being discussed by William Connolly, and Jane Bennett, whose idea of ‘vibrant matter’ suggests that the objects of nature act as quasi-agents, with their own potentialities and motivations. Bennett wants to nudge “people to feel more of the rich complexity of material life, to think of nature not as something out there but as a set of inter acting forces, flows and entities at work inside our bodies as they also form various kinds of links across bodies . . . The self has become a very diffused, distributed and composite thing.”77 Bennett has now turned to working on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “his wildly—and dangerously—expansive notion of self is intriguing to me . . . [And] he says that what America needs most are bards—bards!—and a certain kind of poetry.”78 Bennett’s turn to Whitman’s poetic conception of nature is fascinating. To conclude this chapter, I will to turn to two perhaps outdated, but great, books which I believe assist in illuminating the manner in which

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contemporary postmodernism has problematically subsumed Pangle’s appeal to nature. With this subsumption, our current postmodern condition negates the clear and thus ennobling distinction of postmodernism from the Socratic project. These two books are Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, and Northrop Frye’s Words With Power. Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization contrasts the images of Prometheus and Narcissus, where Prometheus symbolizes “productiveness, the unceasing effort to master life . . . [and] progress,” and Narcissus the “redemption of pleasure, the halt of time.”79 The Narcissistic image recalls “the experience of the world that is not to be mastered and controlled but to be liberated—a freedom that will release the powers of Eros now bound in the repressed and petrified forms of man and nature.”80 To align oneself with the Narcissistic image is to awaken the potentialities in nature, to allow nature to be “just as it is.” 81 Where the Promethean drive is associated with science and progress, the Narcissistic drive is associated with a poetic and erotic sphere: Narcissus’ “language is song and his work is play”; it is an “erotic reconciliation (union) of man and nature in the aesthetic attitude.”82 These are, in fact, two contrasting and creative spheres: one rationalist and progressive, the other poetic. Like Marcuse, Pangle seems to privilege the poetic, erotic drive to the rationalist progressive one, which seeks to Enlighten mankind and strive for the unending telos of scientific progress: “Science, in general, is a progressive and cumulative enterprise, in which the earlier stages may be envisaged as the lisping babyhood or awkward adolescence that at best prefigure the later stages of an ever-ascending process of discovery and consolidation of knowledge.” 83 This Promethean scientific impulse is subject to the same dynamic of childhood and maturity discussed at length above: it is a view of the world that sees a kind of maturation of the masses through education. What needs to be preserved, claims Pangle, in opposition to this impulse are the great debates that “are the ever-renewed proof of the permanence of Socratic eros.”84 This erotic impulse is, as has been discussed above, one that philosophically probes into the unfinished quest for the truth about nature; it is in many ways a fundamentally poetic—and thus from the Promethean perspective, useless—enterprise. The useful enterprise—of founding the state on natural right—has, however, itself begun to be coopted by the poetic impulse to unify man with nature. It is a postmodern and poetic playfulness that seeks to identify itself with nature (reflected, for example in Bennett’s love of Whitman) and, like Narcissus, thus reduces itself to a mirror of nature, seeing itself reflected only in the liberation from its oppressively aesthetic twin of the Promethean rationalist sphere. This, perhaps, is a danger that Rorty

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forecasted—in claiming that Enlightenment ideals ought to be maintained while “cut[ing] the links which connect those values with the image of the Mirror of Nature”85—that Pangle did not. In claiming that the political sphere can be preserved in its conventionality through a natural foundationalism, the democratic mythology has gone too far. This is, however, consistent with Pangle’s overall hesitation that Enlightening the citizenry is, at root, a dangerous enterprise. Here, in this postmodern poetic impulse, we see the mirror image of Socratic eros: it is a playful desire for the self-sameness with what is true by nature that contains the potential defiance of convention and given realities or rationalities. As Northrop Frye writes in Words with Power: “the motto of Delphi was ‘Know Thyself,’ which suggests that the self intended was a conscience far below the ego with its anxieties of self-interest, far below all social and cultural conditioning, in short the spiritual self. For that self to ‘know itself’ would constitute the unity of Word and Spirit in which all consciousness begins and ends. Such a spirit could produce its own oracles.”86 It is a self-producing—poetic—enterprise in which the aesthetic and the natural spheres become one.87 By nature and in nature man can know himself only through a self-satisfied denial of convention: a selfidentity or reconciliation of man with nature. This is in equal parts possible through postmodern ‘poetry’ and Socratic eros. But what of the second sphere: the Promethean, rationalist drive? Here we see a counterpoint to this descent into nature. Rorty’s claim is that we ought to openly acknowledge the aesthetics of the political world while maintaining the underlying ambiguities of nature. This suggestion may have had more promise than Pangle was willing to allow. In maintaining the political as an aesthetic there is the danger, of course, that mirrors the dangers of identification with nature: that all things become permissible, including fascism. All human beings can become their own oracles in seeing themselves reflected in the world. But, still, the Promethean aesthetic is one that privileges the rational and creative capacities of men to make their own world in politics; it is the opposing drive to the Narcissistic one, which contains its own inevitable demise: the Promethean “culture-hero” is opposed by Narcissus, who is the “negation of all order.” 88 Both creative enterprises—one ‘rational’ and the other ‘poetic’—they too stand as mirror opposites. In discussing William Blake, Northrop Frye writes: Every image of revelation, whether in the Bible or not, has its demonic parody or contrast. The descent of the visionary ladder would take us into a world where subject and object grow steadily further apart, and end by the subject’s becoming an object too. The phrase ‘they became what they

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The realm of the rationalist aesthetic—the Rortyian acknowledgement of the artifice of the state—would, perhaps, create its like: purely aesthetic or conventional creatures who see the world as their creative playground. But is this really the demonic alternative to a political life grounded in nature that comes to see its world as one that denies all order, including the order of humanity itself? And, indeed, which sees this denial as a poetic flourishing of the natural truth? It is not clear to me which is the greater descent, nor, I think, was Pangle’s conflation of these two alternatives in a conventional/natural polity the Ennobling that he hoped for, nor one that can maintain its status in the world in which we now live. Pangle’s call for a “clear conception of humanity,”90 grounded in nature and resting on a reinvigoration of classical republicanism and Socratic dialectic, is in even more need of defense. And it is possible that this defense can no longer come from a call to reinvigorate a standard of nature, nor from a Socratic dialectic, that has become nearly indistinguishable from the Narcissistic poetry of postmodern thought. How are human beings now to know and ennoble themselves, when nature no longer reflects their image?

Works Cited Archer, Crine, Laura Ephraim and Lida Maxwell. 2013. “Introduction: Politics on the Terrain of Second Nature.” In Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics. New York: Fordham University Press. Ball, Terence. 2006. “Democracy.” In Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge. Ed. Andrew Dobson and Robin Eckersley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bekoff Marc and Jessica Pierce. 2009. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bennett, Jane. 2013. “From Nature to Matter.” In Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics. New York: Fordham University Press. Bourke, Joanna. 2011. What it Means to be Human. Counterpoint Press. Dryzek, John. 1997. The Politics of the Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frye, Northrop. 1990. Words With Power. Penguin Books Limited. Marcuse, Herbert. 1962. Eros and Civilization. New York: Vintage Books.

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Pangle, Thomas L. 1992. The Ennobling of Democracy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Pedersen, Helena. 2011. “Release the Moths: Critical Animal Studies and the Posthumanist Critique.” Culture, Theory and Critique 52(1): 65-81. Plato. 1968. The Republic. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Steiner, Gary. 2013. Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism. New York: Columbia University Press. Watson, Janell. 2013. “Eco-Sensibilities: An Interview with Jane Bennett.” Minnesota Review 81: 147-158.

Notes  1

Thomas L. Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 80. 2 Pangle, Ennobling, 32, 74. 3 Pangle is, despite this assertion, not entirely critical of Nietzsche or Heidegger, as will be discussed further as we proceed. 4 Ibid, 213. 5 Ibid, 139, 152. 6 Ibid, 198. 7 Ibid, 195. 8 Ibid, 154. 9 Ibid, 154. 10 Ibid, 74, 154. 11 Ibid, 78. 12 Ibid, 199. 13 Ibid, 52. 14 Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 536e. 15 Pangle, Ennobling, 85. 16 Ibid, 218. The books labeled as ‘sinister’ by Pangle include Rorty’s, Heidegger’s, Marx’s and Nietzsche’s. An intriguing club. 17 Richard Rorty, quoted in Pangle, Ennobling, 68. 18 Pangle, Ennobling, 129. 19 These accounts will be addressed in more detail in the concluding portions of the paper. 20 Pangle, Ennobling, 74. 21 Ibid, 154. 22 Ibid, 176. 23 Ibid, 48. 24 Ibid, 53. 25 Ibid, 54. 26 Ibid, 53. 27 Ibid, 54.

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Cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 54. Pangle, Ennobling, 58. 30 Ibid, 59. 31 Richard Rorty, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 68 my emphasis. 32 Rorty too ought to be respected here for acknowledging that the Greek world functioned in a manner that is perhaps no longer available to us—one that did in fact function based upon a distinction between rhetoric and logic. 33 Pangle, Ennobling, 52. 34 Ibid, 53. 35 Ibid, 52. 36 Ibid, 22. 37 Ibid, 25. 38 Lyotard, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 27. 39 Pangle, Ennobling, 177. 40 Ibid, 134. 41 Ibid, 137. 42 John Locke, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 144. 43 Noah Webster, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 177. 44 Pangle, Ennobling, 132. 45 Ibid, 183. 46 Ibid, 111. 47 Ibid, 151. 48 These dualities are expressed on Pangle, Ennobling, 73, 93, 127 respectively. 49 Pangle, Ennobling, 158. 50 Ibid, 184. 51 Ibid, 196. 52 Plato, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 209. 53 Plato, Republic, 536e. 54 Pangle, Ennobling, 210. 55 Ibid, 200. 56 Ibid, 199. 57 Ibid, 68. 58 Ibid, 129. 59 Richard Rorty, cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 58. 60 Pangle, Ennobling, 57. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid, 210. 63 Cited in Pangle, Ennobling, 209. 64 Pangle, Ennobling, 154. There could be an objection here that Socrates maintains a distinction from the postmoderns insofar as he remains oriented to the possibility of there being a truth, whereas postmodernity rejects this possibility from the outset. While there are some teeth to this objection, it is still one that I reject, and one that I think Pangle is forced to reject in his description of the “unfinished quest” for natural truths. The danger of postmodernity is that it reveals this ‘unfinishedness’ to the masses, which has deleterious political consequences. 29

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 While it might be possible in the Socratic mode to question the foundations of human nature and nature itself only to return to a reaffirmation of the nomoi, this is, as Plato makes clear, impossible unless we are living in a polis ruled by philosophers—not in a democracy. Postmodern democrats have, in fact, turned toward the questioning of nature in pursuit of a natural truth; one with which they wish the nomoi would accord. They too are in pursuit of truth about the natural condition. And it may in fact be the case that this is the truth that accords with democracy. 65 Joanna Bourke, What it Means to be Human (New York: Counterpoint Press, 2011), 16. 66 Helena Pederson, “Release the Moths: Critical Animal Studies and the Posthumanist Critique,” Culture Theory and Critique 52.1 (2011): 65-81, 68. 67 Terence Ball, “Democracy,” in Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge, ed. Andrew Dobson and Robin Eckersley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 144. 68 See John Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 69 Crine Archer, Laura Ephraim, and Lida Maxwell, “Introduction: Politics on the Terrain of Second Nature,” in Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 6. 70 Ibid. 71 Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), x-xi. 72 Cited in Bekoff and Pierce, Wild Justice, 132. 73 Gary Steiner, Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 194. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid, 195. 76 Ibid, 197. 77 Jane Bennett, in Janell Watson, “Eco-Sensibilities: An Interview with Jane Bennett,” Minnesota Review 81 (2013): 147-158, 153. 78 Ibid, 158. 79 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 146, 148. 80 Ibid, 149. 81 Ibid, 150. 82 Ibid, 156. 83 Pangle, Ennobling, 201-202. 84 Ibid, 218. 85 Ibid, 57. 86 Northrop Frye, Words With Power (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 251. 87 As Jane Bennett has written: “‘Nature’ is this: an active becoming, a creative not-quite-human force capable of producing the new, buzzes within it.” Jane Bennett, “From Nature to Matter,” In Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural Through Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 154.

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Marcuse, Eros, 156. Frye, Words, 87. 90 Pangle, Ennobling, 183. 89

CHAPTER FIFTEEN AN ARGUMENT FOR CRITICAL AND LIBERAL EDUCATION: A SYNTHESIS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN THOUGHT NAOMI COUTO

Introduction Education is a moral issue that must engage our attention and deserves our critical energies. How we understand education plays a part in the fore or the arguments designed to persuade us toward moral commitment or action. This chapter will direct upon the important task of formulating clear moral premises around education policies. I make the claim that the market-approach to education will deaden and threaten critical thinking skills that are essential to discussions on freedom and justice in a democratic society. I will argue that promoting the moral and ethical dimensions of the education process is a responsibility we have to our selves, our communities and our society. An ‘ethos’ of ancient and modern thought will be developed as a specific relationship to the state of education in the modern world today. That is, it will concern itself with the nature and purpose of public education as an ethos of culture and how it perceives itself in the realms of past and present narratives. Tensions between education as “functional” and education as “critical thinking”, will inform our discussions on what vision animates education: both sides of the debate arguing that they produce a desirable kind of person/society. My aim in this chapter is a critique of the logic inherent in functional models of education. Here, I will sketch out a phenomenology of critical thinking, which will help account for both the enthusiastic support of critical thinking course and the determined opposition to them by certain

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political and market-place forces. I argue that education should be more than just learning a skill, or fitting people into an economy.

The Economy of Education An analysis of alienation in our contemporary education process will guide our investigation of a general loss of self-determination, which produces false consciousness and low self-esteem. These reified states of mind will be analyzed through Marxian and phenomenological categories. I will ask, ‘what is the nature of the relationship between thinking, language and education’ (as a humanizing process)? This question receives its classical analysis in the “Allegory of the Cave” (Plato’s Republic). Just as it has been re-stated and re-examined in the writings of Martin Heidegger (Existential phenomenology) and Paulo Freire (Critical Pedagogy). Each of these thinkers, from the perspective of his conceptual framework, is clarifying the inter-related meanings of thinking, language, and education, in the context of what it means to be a ‘Human Being’. This leads to an exploration of the socializing and humanizing dimension of the educational process. This brief investigation will consider models of education (market place and functional) that serve and cater to the goals of a capitalist economy. First, the working definitions of these models must be addressed in order to continue the illustration of the disparities between the whole notion of critical thinking and professional accreditation requirements. Market place demands on education are premised on notions of the business model as efficient and based on skill and competency. That is, an implicit trust in competition as the best form of strengthening and delivering a better education system. This of course undermines education as a process of learning to think creatively and alternatively. In the market place model, education is about exchangeability of labour – and people are simply commodities. As John F. Witte argues, what would a pure education market produce? On the demand side, with families paying full costs, the total investment in education is likely to fall and, given various estimates of willingness to mortgage future incomes, fall substantially. Second, with demand being heavily dependent on income (which also conditions ability to borrow against future income), investment would be uneven between families and highly correlated with income.1 To consider the implications of market-place mentality on education is to ask about what being human means to us today. Concepts of freedom, rights, and happiness all compliment the ethos of democratic citizenship. The idea of an education system that merely reproduces workers offends

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our very notion of ‘personhood’ and education comes to be viewed as ideological manipulation. Namely, our subjectivity is constructed as compliant to the needs of the dominant market system in place. Education as competitive behaviour creates personhood – but it is one that is insecure, divided, lacking in critical consciousness and reformulated as items of consumption. Mark Mason also addresses this theme of unhappiness and alienation in his work on an ethics of integrity, Modernity’s secularizing and iconoclastic processes have produced what has been called the “disenchantment” of the world, which has in turn contributed to a diminished moral responsibility. …Accompanying these developments, in large part because of the moral vacuum consequent on the disenchantment of traditional order and because of the immense power of modern technology, has been a rise in instrumental rationality, a kind of rationality that calculates the most economical or efficient means to a given end with scant regard for the human or other moral consequences.2

The moral consequence of a market place education model is of course estrangement. Namely, our inability to self-recognize will be played out not only in the arena of education as a socializing process but also in how we perform at home, work, and in every other institution that we participate in for identity. Here we can begin to ask about what kind of citizen emerges from an education system that view’s itself as a corporation. We must ask ourselves to reflect on a society where “student” and “product” become inter-changeable terms. In our modern, capitalistic societies, we have come to accept the dominant language of privatization and ownership in the material world as the norm. This ‘norm’ produces subjects that are regulated by access to commodities as their lifeline to freedom. ‘To have’ or ‘not to have’ marks us belonging or not belonging to the ‘good’ life. This shaping of consciousness is amplified in an education system that begins this type of thinking early on in the life of the individual and in the ethos of social perception. As the corporation/school raises the child, happiness becomes the means to consumption (including “the grade” as a thing to possess, not the end result of interacting and maturing with the subject matter at hand). Barlow and Robertson put it this way: The commercialization of the classroom and the corporate intrusion into the education system are working very well. They are producing a generation of children who, as Ralph Nader describes them, are “growing up corporate.” They are treated – and often see themselves – as consumers-in-training, pre-workers, future entrepreneurs. Such children ask few questions and do not challenge the culture of competitiveness.3

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The wants our children have in an education system styled on free market is a ‘want’ that usually goes without a need or reflective act. They look at education but are not engaged with it. This surface understanding of what it means to “get an education” inevitably fails the majority of our youth as the corporate model of who is educated defines them and they willingly accept these labels without the creative and critical skills that would allow them to engage with and challenge this exploitation. This falls in line with Mason’s analysis of the consequences of modernity. Consider what ideas regarding community are placed at the center of a market driven education system as Mason outlines: The excessively strong sense of individualism and the consequent withdrawal from commitment, the common acceptance of an instrumental approach to reason, the sense of a life given identity, value, and status in terms of the accumulation of consumer products and the pervasive devaluation of the worth of any deeper source of meaning, are all moral consequences of late modernity that influence young people, who are still developing their sense of identity, all the more impressively. The moral challenges of modernity are yet more critical in the lives of young people.4

The promise of modernity lies in its appeal to the rights of the individual: as human beings, we would like to assume that we are all unique individuals. To some extent this may be true but at the macrosociological level, we understand that our identity is also shaped by the surroundings and community in which we cohabitate. Our education system is a continuation of this larger ethos and we as critical educators aim to see a progression of meaningfulness that is constantly re-examined and engaged with by our youth. However, within a market model of education we see a regression in critical and alternative thinking skills. The reduction of critical inquiry and construction of limited ways of seeing normalizes what is considered ‘education’. It is the ‘massaging over’ life that Nietzsche discusses in his works. That is it dis-invites critical reflection and mass-produces a type of thinking that does not reveal the complexity of human life. The complexity of human life is part of the ethos revealed to us in an education system that is tied into the whole of existence (the integrity of education). It’s in the gift of ‘becoming human’ that education shows its true significance; an education that is not founded in the functions or market of reproducing the system – but one founded in the humanness of allowing every avenue of reflection and debate left open to its social members. In Dottin et al., this concern is clearly illustrated in the following:

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It is not possible to discover the full value of academic freedom without asking about the value of intellectual freedom to inquire, express ideas and debate spheres of communication and education. Since these trends occurred once before in our century, we should ask about the ultimate effects they have had on intellectual freedom in general and academic freedom in particular. Since these trends culminated in fascism we should ask what formulations were given to intellectual and academic freedom at the time. How were these freedoms construed? What value was placed on them? This will clarify the nature of the choice before us today when we decide how much we value academic freedom.5

And, The extreme orientation toward careers and making money in today’s society, with extreme consequences for what is offered as education, makes it hard to believe that education has often been a very different kind of activity. In the western world there have been academies, from the earliest times dedicated to the Greek ideal of character formation and human excellence (arête). The goal for the cultivation of judgment is the ability to temper one’s judgments (sophrosyne), always seeking relevant evidence. With this conception, education becomes a many-sided process of development, cultivating the many sides of human beings so that they can appreciate considerations that have a bearing on fundamental choices as well as on immediate practical decisions. The goal of this educational process is directly at odds with the goal of restricting education to vocational and technical preparation. It is in the interest of people who prefer democracy to choose the more traditional educational ideal over the ideal that has prevailed recently in a period distinctly more materialistic and nationalistic than others.6

Here we recognize the urgency in revealing the dangers of a marketbased approach to education. Not only is the idea of ‘what is education’ at stake but also the very core of bringing up aware and caring citizens is in crisis. How is it that this functional model of education operates? Clearly it seduces through its numbing of the population by dis-inviting us from the ability to think as it ‘wow’s’ and ‘dazzles’ us with education as entertainment and/or a stroll through the market to buy what we can and forget/not see the rest. This reformulation of education represses any imagination that might allow for challenging the order of the day. Since we are ‘born into Capitalism’ seeing the possibility of other becomes impossible when even the institution of education constructs this as unavailable or unreasonable. How do we as educators get students interested in being critically aware members when the world around them constructs this way of thinking as deviant or strange? The urgency here is to hold onto the traditional and

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democratic roots of ‘what it means to educate’ and allow these to challenge the modern narrative of education as a stepping-stone for your place in the market economy. If as Barlow and Robertson write, the only goal of education is about raising the future workforce, we as a society all lose. This type of corporate culture will eventually create an ethos dripping in the rights of the one over the rights of the group, extending well beyond the classroom boundaries. We will also come to feel this egotism at every level, and on every corner of human interaction: Schools are being pressured to train students into this corporate culture, indoctrinating them in individual competitiveness and loyalty to company policy. Many are applying the TQM model to the school. Says Doug Noble: “Above all, high-tech corporate interest in education reform expects a school system that will utilize sophisticated performance measures and standards to sort students and to provide a reliable supply of such adaptable, flexible, loyal, mindful, expendable, ‘trainable’ workers of the twenty-first century. This, at bottom, underlies the corporate drive to retool education and retool human capital.7

This corporate pressure also produces youth who passionately defend what they are involved in – trying to get the high paying job – and neglects the type of thinking that will allow them to understand why they did not get that job or the leisure life promised. If how we ‘see’ is regulated and the education process is a part of how we come to see, reflect, and understand, then we clearly need to challenge a model of education that privileges the bottom line. The market model of education deliberately constructs narratives of efficiency and success by appealing to the Capitalist ethos of competition and aggressiveness in getting ahead. As Capitalism is generally publicly approved, its ideas being used in running our education system tends to go seriously unchallenged. We ‘approve’ a system that values hard work and dedication by the individual. We ‘approve’ a system that regulates itself in order for the rest of us to get on with the pleasures it can afford. We don’t think about those that do not succeed in this system, as anything but ‘not trying hard enough’. This type of regressive thinking is precisely what we cannot afford to approve of for the sake of our future society. What we have ‘afforded’ to live with these past decades cannot continue as more and more of our youth are becoming bored with life, with the social, and with the meaninglessness they can’t express in the Capitalist language we have offered them. So what does the corporate model offer the realm of education? By treating education as a commodity, it offers our youth the false hope that maybe this commodity will give them some meaning or purpose in life. As

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Marx and countless others have shown us, commodity consumption cannot satisfy our search for meaning and happiness in life. If we offer this as a viable means to understanding existence, we end up with a generation that is unable to express their values and desires in anything but a capitalistic language. This can lead to an incoherence and imbalance between what they are feeling and seek to express and a mode of expression that is limited in challenging and questioning the boredom and/or anxiety they feel in our culture. They learn to see education as the folder they bind their essays in rather than the meaning of the words written in it. They learn to barter and negotiate for their final grade rather than feel the human growth and maturation of working at a final grade. The ethos built in a market based education system cannot sustain the overall social ethos of empathy and communal engagement that a traditional form of education offers its citizens (not consumers or products). This traditional form of education is deeply rooted in the making of the political citizen: today’s youth as engaged with and interested in the future of civilization: Democratic action also involves cooperation and the citizenship role. The essence of the cooperative relationship is two-way communication; it is possible only when individuals have purposes in common and recognize the need they have for each other. When cooperative and collaborative attitudes exist, a group becomes active and pours its efforts into problemsolving activities. In both training and educational activities, people “…learn from experience that interdependence exists and that they are part of it. And thus they have consciousness of their citizenship role.”8

For this reason the cultural formation of consciousness must be taken up in an ethos of progressive education. Namely, education as rooted in our multiple histories but always with its sights on the multiple possibilities for the future. This entails a clear understanding that an education system formulated through the eyes of capitalism alone will invite our youth to participate enthusiastically in seeing themselves as mere image or surface appearances. They will treat what it means to be human as the appearance of things rather than search for essence (the goal of the search, not the essence found or lost, as the true purpose of educating oneself). This in turn helps facilitate the order of consumption – where the ‘appearance’ of things takes on cultural appropriateness. The outcome being that we have to ask how our youth can take themselves seriously when they are produced and inevitably buy into these images of themselves? Our difficulty as educators lies in challenging our students to see that the “norm” is not “natural”. We at least still have our traditional sense of

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education as the making of the ‘moral human being’. Our biggest challenge is in ‘de-normalizing’ capitalist language in the classroom. A market based education system will not allow for this type of challenge, as it is a significant partner in state control. As a tool for popularizing the status quo, it cannot be critical of the power that feeds it. Corporations and governments working together to control the plights of their future workforce create market place education. This legitimating of the status quo is a real danger to the future of creative and critical thinkers as they are up against the power of hegemonic rule as it disseminates into the larger society. According to Canadian academics Barlow and Robertson: Survival of the fittest is the message, but for public consumption, rightwing education reform must be couched in the language of excellence and achievement. This strategy promises to be just as effective as the efforts of the conservative alliance to manipulate our political consciousness and economic policies. Business has worked hard to convince Canadians that their interests are our interests; business invested a great deal in having the public see the deficits as the only issue of economic importance, and to convince the public of the inexhaustible opportunities presented by the Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. And while many Canadians are distrustful of, if not hostile to these political motives of business, we seem unprepared to regard their sudden interest in the reform of schools with similar skepticism.9

This legitimization of business practices as the best tools to run our schools runs throughout our narratives of how best to bring up our young. These narratives are further legitimized in mass media regarding the education system that encourages passivity and/or uniform responses contained in the language of efficiency and free market analysis. With little time spent on engaging these issues, we as a society learn little from this lack of activity. Like an education system steeped in market allusions, our own understanding of this take-over of mind/education is no longer active and engaged as we simply channel the reproduced language and imagery of the status quo. My intent here is to highlight and connect the type of interrupted learning that comes from the functional or market place model of education. Being critical is not part of the construction of a docile workforce. To do so would be to destroy the very idea of market place education from within. Note that the real danger of a market-styled education is the representations of the everyday life that this type of learning generates onto the larger society. This omnipresent and continual legitimization of market discourse in all spheres of life leads to our inability to think along any other types and levels of imaginings. As our

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youth are ‘sold’ on education as a means of getting a job or education is about survival of the most fit, we leave them with little access to the comprehension of education as a life long journey that may include a particular career but is so much more as we call on it to aid us through very human struggles throughout our lives. Education as developing character – one that can think and read beyond the surface or functional understandings of social institutions -- can allow for, dare I say, a happier and more aware population even at our darkest moments. Re-thinking the value system inherent in a market place education is essential in making an argument against it running our educational institutions as a whole. What is at stake is the capacity for an ethos rich in human compassion, reason, and the ability to think clearly in times of trial and urgency. As technology further enhances our travels into the global (literally and metaphorically), we must encourage education as a human right to access its own understanding of freedom and humaneness. Control over what is learned and how it is learned (in the name of advancing capitalism, for example) can only end up turning on itself as its forced compliance weighs heavily on the human need to figure things out for themselves.

Theoretical Synthesis In turning to thinking about usages of key theorists for this work, Karl Marx borrowed much from the ancient philosophers and in many ways he can best be described as a syntheses of the ancient and modern schools of philosophy. Despite this, Marx asserted that the duty of a political philosopher was to work towards the change of the world. This stands in direct contrast to Plato and Aristotle who sought to understand the world. In my analysis, I will show that it is Marx’s definition that can be best used to understand a given state and society. This is so mainly because of Marx’s view of historical materialism. Each society creates the seeds for the next stage of human development. By doing this we gain an insight that is not superficial but that is quite substantive and useful, as I will attempt to illustrate here. Plato’s fault lies in the fact that he so separates himself from the world that he denies economics and needed social relations. But when he does ‘return to earth’ he justifies upper class domination and has a disdain for the masses. Aristotle supersedes Plato by understanding needed social functions but again falls short by his concentration on private property and restricted citizenship. This makes him applicable in capitalist terms but detracts from the legitimacy of his argument. Marx is, as I stated above, the syntheses of the ancient and

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modern. His genius and the validity of his thought, rest in the creative and contradictory combination of ancient social ethics with his scientific or economic approach. Plato’s philosophy began by synthesizing two main schools of Greek thought. On the one hand he agreed with Heraclitus that things were in constant flux, while on the other hand he agreed with Parmenides that fundamental reality was permanence. He stated that only the unchangeable, the higher truths, were knowable. Plato believed that all men were created unequal, both morally and in their souls. This meant that everyone’s potential was not the same and that only a few could use reason to attain or understand these eternal truths. Fundamentally this makes Plato an aristocrat, since he believed that only those qualified (the few) should rule – the ruler qua ruler. He believed in a very hierarchal and structured society, in which the masses would be restrained from upsetting the balance (dike). To achieve this goal Plato endorsed the use of force through the Guardian class and through the use of censorship, education and the noble lie (a myth created by the Rulers to justify their rule). Plato was a Substantialist; that is he rejected the finding of truth in the material world and sought it in higher wisdom and knowledge. From this perspective, it is easy to agree with Aristotle’s objection that Plato was too speculative and utopian, and therefore too removed from actual societies and constitutions. This created a huge gap from the ideal to the actual state in the Republic. But when Plato returned to earth (the digression of the ideal state and in his work the Laws) he spoke of a society similar to feudalism and one based on upper class domination. After the ideal state he speaks of “timocracy” as found in Sparta, as the next best. As is known, Sparta was an oligarchic state that often fought against the democratic forces of Athens. Plato was looking at not creating the “best society” but creating the best society within the context of the Greek polis and within the context of maintaining inequality, upper-class rule, and most importantly, keep the majority, the lower classes, from participating. “It is clear that this championship of the people is the one and only root from which dictatorship and dictator can grow.” 10 In fact, Plato despises tyranny, not so much because of its despotic and unfree nature, but because the tyrant gets power and appeals to the lowest strata of society by redistributing from the rich (the few) to the poor (the many). There are many problems in applying Plato to any given state and society. He is so clearly unable to imagine equality and thereby majority rule. Plato can be applied to feudalist societies but his model does not include a view of history (since he found this useless) and it does not account for change. His view claims that the ideal society is one based on

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inequality and class domination and that there is no room for the masses to participate. From this Plato is biased to the particular class that he was born into, he does not break the bonds of his class in order to truly see the need for liberation for all. Plato is also difficult to apply to any given state and society because he speaks of only the philosophers having the ability to rule. Once again he is discounting the majority and concentrating on his own biases. In summation, Plato presupposes inequality and from that point on it is clear that his applicability is very limited since most societies have at least begun from the truth of equality. Therefore, it is very difficult to apply Plato to any other society except his own and feudalism. As stated above, Plato is also difficult to apply universally because of his class bias. His vision, when he returns to practical terms, is rule by the elites of society – namely, the nobility. Therefore, this is a view that is not applicable to a wide spectrum of society because of this bias and incomplete view. To Aristotle there are three good states: Monarchy, Aristocracy and ‘Polity’ and three bad states: Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Democracy. Aristotle believed that all men were born equal and free. He began by looking at concrete constitutions of his time. To Aristotle, abstract and material were inseparable. He believed that man was a social animal, since man associated with others through the state and the expression of this was the constitution. He believed that you must have some material goods in order to be or do “good”. Aristotle’s ideal state was the “polity”, a medium between oligarchy and democracy. It combined that good point of oligarchy, private property, with the good point of democracy, majority rule. He believed that the middle class was the acceptable medium to rule, since the rich were too interested and the poor, or masses, were inept and liable to create instability. He, like Plato, believed that people of reason ought to rule and was violently opposed to any form of extremism. “Thus it is the greatest good fortune for those engaged in politics to have a middling and sufficient property, because where some possess very many things and others nothing, either (rule of) the people in its extreme form come into being or unmixed oligarchy, or – as a result of both these excesses – tyranny.”11 What is striking about Aristotle is his defense of private property and the centre this issue has in his ideal state and citizenry. He believed that any citizen, one who participates actively in the state, must have private property and that this property must be distributed unevenly. To this end, he thought that manual laborers, such as artisans, mechanics and farm workers, were not fit to be considered part of the state and were subject to the property-holding rulers. These rulers must not be involved in any type

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of manual labour, since it was beneath them and did not allow them to take the time to be actively involved in the important decisions of the state. His objection to democracy was that he felt it took land from the wealthy. In Aristotle we see the beginnings of the later separation of pubic and civil society in the category of rights. He felt that equality of certain rights was necessary to appease the masses and, therefore, maintain the stability of the state. In my estimate, Aristotle is a well-disguised aristocrat. His bias is towards property-holders and rule by these individuals. His disdain for the lower orders and, what Marx would call, the petty bourgeoisie is quite violent. His belief that if the masses rule they create instability, ultimately emerges from his belief that they are inept. Like Plato, he believes that those of reason should rule. But for Aristotle the distinguishing feature is holding of property. It is very difficult to apply Aristotle to any given state or society for several reasons. One being, his lack of a holistic historical view, like Plato, which can travel beyond the confines of ancient Greece. His strength lies in his recognition of the importance of social relations and his understanding of economic motivation and its importance. But his defense of slavery and private property put him into the realm of the defense of privilege. Slavery is something that is not natural, and in the Marxist view, neither is private property. Aristotle is reflected quite forcefully in modern liberal-capitalist ideology and with it come all the contradictions of that system. That is, the political or civil equality masking the true inequality, which is economic. Aristotle states that there is equality only as some kind of concession. Marx claims that: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle… Free man and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word oppressor and oppressed…”12

The above statement is what Marx believed usually happened, with a few exceptions, in the course of history. All periods retain class struggle with different types of classes. During bourgeois revolution it was between the ruling aristocracy and the up-coming bourgeoisie. Marx viewed history as being made not by individuals but by social aggradation. As an example, a person is a slave in and through society. In other words, his condition is a societal relationship. These classes are irreconcilable and remain in conflict. Often, the conflict is not violent or revolutionary. This conflict emerges when the class on top tries to extract as much labour as possible from the lower classes. In Marx’s time he was referring to the

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proletariat (the worker) being dominated by the owners of the means of production (the factories, machinery etc.…). The capitalist extracted profit from the proletariat, since it was the laborer that actually produced the valuable product for market sale. The proletariat worked for wages and therefore was subjected to the rule, almost slave-like, of the capitalist. Marx saw that in the course of history, the proletariat would eventually overthrow the existing bourgeois order and replace it with a proletarian one, that would eventually eliminate all class distinctions. His work, as a result, tended to focus on the working of the capitalist system and the bringing about of this new order. He and Engels worked to form the proletariat into a class (with its own consciousness), facilitate for the conquest of power by the proletariat and the elimination of private property.

Will to Change In order for us to understand whether it is better to understand society, in the Platonic and Aristotelian sense, or to change it, in the Marxist sense, we must try to understand the true nature of humans and their society. If we believe that humans are living in the most natural way and that this way will never change than we must seek to understand. But if we believe that society and human nature is constantly changing and that we have not reached our true nature, than we must seek to look at what the next step is, as well as the present one, and facilitate that change. I believe that we have gone through many changes in history, some positive, others negative, and I think that the facts of history seems to ascertain this point of view. In fact, it seems that the very nature of the world is change. We must ask ourselves why this change occurs. In any society there is an existing order and within that order there is a class of individuals that benefit from it. In the case of feudalism, it was the aristocrats, while in the case of capitalism, it is the bourgeoisie, while in still other cases it my be a particular race or gender. Eventually, these forces gain consciousness and begin to demand and battle for acceptance and fair treatment – that is they seek to escape their oppression. Here is the mandate of a liberal and critical education. The mandate of engaging minds about their conditions and the possibility of the other. Moreover, they seek to change the existing society, at least in some way. Consequently, we have a galvanization of society between those who want change and those who would prefer the status quo. Marx did not say that this process of change would go on forever but he did insinuate that it would continue until the majorities were heard and

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the oppression had ended. In other words, when there were no longer any groups to redress and ask for change; then we would have reached the end of history and therefore the true nature of humanity. According to Marx: “Every mode of production carries its own negation within itself.”13

Like Plato and Aristotle, Marx understood that it was important to understand the world or society, as it was in order to understand the next stage of development. According to Marx, the system of operation has always created, with itself, the means for its ultimate demise. In Marx’s case he sought to understand capitalism because within it, and its mode of production, he saw the future – namely, the proletariat. He saw an imperfect society where the proletariat was slave to the machine and the capitalist who owned that machine. Therefore, the proletarians were the ones with the force and destiny to enact the next change in society. To Marx it was not enough for a political philosopher to understand the world that he was in, since somewhere within the particular mode of production were the seeds of its own destruction. A political philosopher must be able to analyze the world, in relation towards the next stage of development on the road to human liberation. Plato and Aristotle, as has been stated, sought to understand the world. This approach is lacking in comparison to Marx. To understand the world, as it is, is to say that the status quo will remain. It is to say that the world, society as it is, is humanity at its true nature. But, as we have seen, it is difficult to imagine man at his true nature, when, as Marx has shown, man is alienated from nature and from other men in social relations. As Marx states this: While, therefore, alienated labour takes away the object of production from man, it also takes away his species-life, his real objectivity, as a species-being, and changes his advantage over animals into a disadvantage in so far as his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.14

However, it is possible to apply Plato and Aristotle to their particular time period but beyond that there are several difficulties in the arguments and methods are found to be lacking. It is difficult to apply Plato or Aristotle to different time periods, while Marx’s methods and rules can be applied in any time period. For in each time period, we will find elements of class conflict and of historical materialism. This advantage of Marx comes from his acceptance and study of change and how it must continue. To Plato and Aristotle, change is basically unaccounted for since they

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assumed that you could not improve or want to change the model of the Greek city-states.

General Strengths of Critical Education and the Deficiencies in Ancient Accounts In this section I will concentrate more on Marx’s strengths or the adequate nature of his methods and theories than on Plato and Aristotle, since I have already included criticisms of both thinkers. First and foremost, Marx is seeking the liberation of the human being. He understands that the duty of a political philosopher is to work towards this goal. To this end, he synthesizes two of the most influential strands of thought in the west, that is, ancient social ethics (reflected in Aristotle’s Ethics) and modern economic and scientific theory (reflected in the English economists and Charles Darwin). This makes Marx a unique combination, in a Hegelian dialectical fashion. It is this that gives Marx his strength over Plato and Aristotle; for Plato denied the use of historicism and the material world in political philosophy, while Aristotle seemed to examine the existing world to the exclusion of higher educational values or goals to further social change. Aristotle’s ideal state was a compromise, not the best state, but the least evil one. Marx’s view of history and specifically his idea of class struggle can be applied to ancient Greece. This is by nature of the universal character of Marx; “But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other.” 15 Marx’s view is also more international in character. Plato and Aristotle were looking only at ancient, civilized Greece, while Marx recognized that there could be things in common between different people of different nations. He realized that nations had similar histories and states of development and that the proletariat would triumph in all. Marx speculated that: What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.16

From the above quote we discover two things about Marx. First, he is able to actually go beyond and describe, unlike Plato and Aristotle, the influence and emergence of the class domination ideas. He realizes that ideology is often the main offspring of the dominant class and that it has been so in every age of human history. Second, he goes beyond his own time period and his own class and is able to understand the forces of

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change and the plight of the proletariat. According to this rule, Marx should have defended bourgeois values and the capitalist system since he was a member of that particular class. Yet, he understood that a few intellectuals would be able to surpass their class bias and speak for the downtrodden or for another class. Plato and Aristotle do not stand up to the same scrutiny. Plato defended inequality and a highly stratified society, which was similar to the rule of his own class, while Aristotle defended the values of property-holders and the middle class, which is where he seems to have come from. Therefore, of the three thinkers it is only Marx who is able to successfully break the bonds of his own class and the dominant ideology of his time. One of the ways in which Marx is able to surpass both Plato and Aristotle, is by developing a comprehensive theory of history. He tells us about the conflict of classes as the moving force of history and the connection between this and the present mode of production. Plato ignores history completely, while Aristotle looks only at concrete examples of Greek antiquity. Therefore, they both lack the timeless analogies and methods that can be drawn from Marx, as well as the general movement and forces that ultimately drive people and society. Without this, we cannot apply their theory to the rest of history. While in Marx, we find a theory and method that can satisfactorily explain the ebbs and flows of history, the gyrations, and explosions of violence and change and the squalor and depression of any time period. But more importantly, we can see a flow, a pattern of history. We can determine that we are on our way to something and that these particular forces of history will still be its thrust. This is very useful, not only in analyzing the past, but in trying to determine the future and, indeed, the very purpose and culmination of history. Marx was a unique combination of ancient social ethicist and modern scientific and economic thinker. His social ethics are reflected in such ideas and concepts as alienation and the need of individuals to relate to each other in a real and human way. Contact and connection was necessary or each man would end up feeling completely isolated and alienated from everyone else. This in turn would be humanity in a very unnatural state. Marx recognized, as Aristotle and Plato, that man was a social animal. He must be able to interact with others; it is in her very nature. Therefore, any system or circumstances that impeded me from doing so is unnatural and it must be removed in order for that individual to be content, happy, and spiritually satisfied. The economists of the industrial revolution such as David Ricardo and Adam Smith, as well as Charles Darwin, affected Marx quite deeply.

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While the economists enriched his knowledge of the capitalist system, in Darwin he saw someone who had developed an indisputable formula that spoke about the natural development of man over time. Marx, like Vico before him, wanted to discover such a development in social terms. He wanted to be able to uncover the scientific laws that would explain the movements and changes of human social history. At the same time, he recognized the power of humans, as social beings, to change and help the course of history. These two elements together made Marx’s thought quite unique. He had a very special spiritual and social aspect, which successfully expressed the frustration of alienation and the capitalist system, and he had a very analytical and scientific side that was able to masterfully analyze the above-mentioned system. It is these two strands together that make Marx different from Plato and Aristotle in adding to our need of a critically engaged education system. For in the two ancients we have very structured and non-contradictory philosophies but in Marx we have the Hegelian dialectic in action. Because of this he is able to understand and perceive on so many different levels in comparison to Plato and Aristotle. This is so because he can at one moment speak of the need for social action, while at other moments he can scientifically analyze a particular system. It makes for a very rich and substantial framework from which to analyze and understand history, society and forces of change.

An Aristocratic Tradition Plato and Aristotle are part of a tradition in ancient Greece whose purpose it was to defend a declining and decadent aristocracy. Both understand that it was decadent and declining and they often heaped criticism on the aristocracy for it. Despite this, they saw the aristocracy as the only virtuous and able class to govern. “To put it briefly, the revolutionary nature of Plato’s political thought lies in his attempt to ‘aristocratize’ the polis, or politicize aristocracy – that is, to synthesis what were in their very essence antithetical forces in the history of Athens, the aristocratic principle and the political principle.”17 Plato was faced with a decadent aristocracy that was experiencing a sharp and violent decline at the hands of the ‘demos’. Therefore, it was imperative for Plato not only to revitalize his class but also to involve and politicize them. Ellen Wood argues, “From the analysis of Aristotle’s political thought it should be apparent that, despite certain differences, he is a worthy political successor of Socrates and Plato, sharing their fundamental antidemocratic and authoritarian perspective.” 18 It is clear, therefore, that

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Aristotle only differed in tactics but his goal was to ensure the political domination of conservative elements and the exclusion of the masses. The aristocracy was suffering decline at the hands of the artisan and merchant class. Aristotle recognized this and forcefully argued for the exclusion of this class from governing in favour of the ‘leisured’ aristocracy. Plato and Aristotle, like Socrates before them, sought to save and solidify the aristocratic form of government. Plato called for the politicization of the aristocracy and preached against the evils of democracy. Aristotle used deceptive tactics that at some points condoned democracy and equality but underneath it all was a disdain for the masses and a defense of aristocratic rule. Therefore, both thinkers were biased towards their class and were in favour of the ‘rule of the few’. These points make them defenders of privilege and therefore, unable to take up the type of educational reform needed at all levels of society. Marx stood for majority rule, namely, the emancipation of all and freedom to all from oppression. Marx was able to surpass the biases of class, position and disdain for the lower orders and develop a theory that included all in the struggle of history and make the lowest orders, those which Plato and Aristotle despised, the next rulers in the progression of history. The attempt here is to show the relationship of change (ability to think critically and alternatively), to an active political and social existence. Plato and Aristotle sought to understand the world but in doing so they condoned the present mode of production under the present rule of the few or the minority over the majority. In Marx, we have a thinker who believed that your social positioning, including access to liberal education, went hand in hand with trying to change the world and/or society. This in reality was much more effective because of the basic nature of change and its relation to the mode of production. In other words, as long as someone is extracting profit from someone else, with very little profit for those being extracted from, than there will be struggle and conflict, as reflected in class – but also in market place models of education. Plato and Aristotle have a universal character that is based on particular uses of their method, while in Marx, we can apply the whole analysis to virtually any given point or case in history and use that to effectively analyze society and the world to a greater extent. Marx understood the contributions made by ancients like Plato and Aristotle and he combined their social ethics with modern ideas of science and economics, which could go a long way to a more critical way of teaching today.

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Bibliography Barlow, Maude and Heather-Jane Robertson. 1994. Class Warfare: The Assault On Canada’s Schools. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Dottin, Erskine S., Terry Armstrong, Robert Cummins, Patricia Edmisten, and David Fritz. 1990. Thinking About Education: Philosophical Issues and Perspectives. Mishawaka, IN: University Press of America. Fischer, Ernst and Franz Marek, eds. 1970. The Essential Marx. New York: Herder and Herder. Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Translated and edited by Martin Milligan. 1961. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1848, original publication. The Communist Manifesto. 2008. The Floating Press. Mason, Mark. 2001. “The Ethics of Integrity: Educational Values Beyond Postmodern Ethics.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education, 35 (1): 47-69. Wiley Online Library. Porter, Jene M. 1989. Classics in Political Philosophy. New Jersey: Prentice Hall College. Witte, John F. 2000. The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1978. Class, Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Social Context. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers.

Notes 1

John Witte. The Market Approach to Education. 201-202. Mark Mason. The Ethics of Integrity. 30-31. 3 Barlow and Robertson. Class Warfare. 85. 4 Mark Mason. The Ethics of Integrity. 33-34. 5 Dottin et all. Thinking About Education. 2. 6 Ibid. 11. 7 Barlow and Robertson. Class Warfare. 89. 8 Dottin et all. Thinking About Education. 54. 9 Barlow and Robertson. Class Warfare. 122. 10 Porter, Jene M. The Republic of Plato, 75. 11 Ibid, 116. 12 Ibid, 487. 13 Fischer, Ernst. The Essential Marx, 82. 14 Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 482. 2

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Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto, 103. Ibid, 102. 17 Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Class, Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Social Context, 120. 18 Ibid, 210. 16

CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Bibby is an Assistant Professor in History and Political Science at Utah Valley University and Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies. Andrew is the recipient of major research awards, including a postdoctoral fellowship in the James Madison Program for American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. He is the author of Montesquieu's Political Economy, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). His next book, Reading Montesquieu in America, explores Montesquieu's legacy and impact on the evolution of constitutional thought in the early American republic. Leah Bradshaw is Professor of Political Science at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. Much of her career has built upon early work on Hannah Arendt (Acting and Thinking: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1989), with particular attention to the dissonance between classical and modern political theory. Recently, she has turned her attention to issues of citizenship in the era of globalization, writing about cosmopolitanism and friendship, and, in addition to several articles and book chapters, a book of essays on the theme of citizenship and multiculturalism, co-edited with David Tabachnick, has just been published: Citizenship and Multiculturalism in Western Liberal Democracies, Rowman and Littlefield: Lexington Books, 2017. Timothy W. Burns is Professor of Political Science at Baylor University and editor of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. He is author of Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom, co-author (with Thomas L. Pangle) of Introduction To Political Philosophy, and editor of several volumes. He has published articles on thinkers from Homer to Nietzsche. Patrick N. Cain is Associate Professor of Political Science at Lakehead University (Ontario, Canada), where he teaches political philosophy and constitutional law. He has published on the political thought of Aristotle, Homer, Benedict XVI, and Constitutional Law, and is developing a book on Aristotle’s account of freedom, knowledge, and the divine in the Nicomachean Ethics.

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Kevin M. Cherry is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond (Virginia). He is the author of Plato, Aristotle, and the Purpose of Politics (Cambridge, 2012), and his articles have appeared in Political Theory, History of Political Thought, and the Journal of Politics. Naomi Couto is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, as well as in the Master’s of Public Policy, Administration, and Law program at York University in Toronto. She is currently working on neoliberal theory and education policy. Her publications include Paradox and Origin: On the Structure of Legal Communication, Violated and Silenced: The Gendering of Justice, and Rob Ford and the End of Honour. Bernard J. Dobski is Associate Professor of Political Science at Assumption College, Worcester, MA. He is the co-editor of two volumes of essays on William Shakespeare. His articles, essays, and book reviews on Thucydides, Xenophon, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and American foreign policy have appeared in the Review of Politics, POLIS, Interpretation, Philosophy and Literature, Society, and Perspectives on Political Science. Jeremy Seth Geddert is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Assumption College. He has published widely on Hugo Grotius, including Hugo Grotius and the Modern Theology of Freedom: Transcending Natural Rights (Routledge, 2017). He has also published on sovereignty, human rights, religion and politics, and the just war tradition. Emma Planinc is a Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Political Theory, The Review of Politics, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science. Lindsay Mahon Rathnam holds the Marcus Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Emory University. She obtained her Ph.D in Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her work explores persuasion and judgment in democratic politics. David Lewis Schaefer is Professor of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, where he teaches courses on political philosophy and American political thought. Among his books are The

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Political Philosophy of Montaigne (1990) and Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the Tradition of Political Philosophy (2007). Ann Ward is Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. Her interests are in the history of political philosophy, especially the ancient political thought of Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle. Her most recent book is Contemplating Friendship in Aristotle’s Ethics (SUNY, 2016), and her articles have appeared in several journals including POLIS, Perspectives on Political Science, European Journal of Political Theory, and The European Legacy. Lee Ward is Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. He has also taught at Campion College at the University of Regina and Kenyon College. He has published widely in the areas of history of political thought, democratic theory and American political thought. His most recent books are John Locke and Modern Life (2010) and Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson (2014).

INDEX A Abizadeh, Arash, 9, 151–152, 160, 166, 168–169, 172n3 Achaeans, 22–23, 31n19 Adams, John, 10–11, 198–201, 269 Anti-Federalists and, 212, 218, 225 on Aristotle, 227n13 formation of political parties and, 222 Hamilton and, 229n41 Madison and, 218–219, 221 Thoughts on Government, 226n8 three classes of men and, 209– 210, 214 Thucydides and, 226n9 Turgot and attempt to answer, 11, 202– 206 dispute with, 10, 198–200, 206–208 Additional Observations on Civil Liberty (Price), 11, 198 Anderson, Benedict, 172n1 Anti-Federalists, 11, 199, 206–225, 229n41 Antigone (Sophocles) burial of Polynices, 64–68 comparison to Plato’s Apology, 68–72 democracy and freedom of speech in, 54–60 overview, 53 Apollo, 49, 61, 63, 66 Apology of Socrates (Plato), 7, 53– 54, 58–64, 68–70, 72

Applied Political Theory and Canadian Politics (McGrane and Hibbert), 5 Aquinas, Thomas, 1, 11, 114, 223, 249n9, 250n31 De Regno divine rules and politics, 122–124 kingship, tyranny, and polity, 115–119 overview, 114–115 scripture, philosophy, and the ideal regime, 119– 122 on democracy, 240–241 God and reason, 139 Grotius and, 129 on kingship, 8–9 on mixed regimes, 8, 114, 119, 125n7, 240–241 political thought and, 1, 233, 250n30 on private property, 235–237 Summa Theologiae, 114, 124n3, 125n7, 125n9, 249n14 on trade, 196n52 Archer, Crine, 278, 285n69 Arendt, Hannah, 107–109 Austin, Norman, 29n5, 31n21 autopsis, 22, 26 B Ball, Terence, 278, 285n67 Balot, Ryan, 95n25 Baracchi, Claudia, 75n48 Barlow, Maude, 289, 292, 294 Bartlett, Robert, 111n22 Bates, Clifford Angell Jr., 250n23 Battle of Arginusae, 7, 53, 70

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe

311

Baumann, Fred, 110n2 beauty, 6, 17–19, 22–23, 26, 30n17, 77 Bekoff, Marc, 278, 285n71 Bellarmine, Roberto, 153 Benardete, Seth, 19, 24–26 Bennett, Jane, 279–280, 285n77, 285n87 Berkowitz, Roger, 109 Bibby, Andrew, 10, 176–192, 307 Bishop, Bill, 251n38 Bottici, Chiara, 3–4 Bourke, Joanna, 278, 285n65 Bradshaw, Leah, 8, 97–109, 307 Bruell, Christopher, 33 Burian, Peter, 29n2 Burns, Timothy, 10–11, 49, 198– 225, 307 Butler, Judith, 54–56, 59–60, 68

Aristotle on, 97–101, 103, 106– 107 character and, 99–100 good citizens and, 100–102 Hobbes on, 103–108 human nature and, 97–99 Newell on, 105–106 politics and, 100–103 suprasensory and, 107–108 Clinton, Hillary, 232 Cochrane, C.N., 36 Connor, W.R., 33, 45 Constant, Benjamin, 11, 126, 140, 199, 224 contract theory, 153–159 Couto, Naomi, 13, 287–304, 308 Creon, 7, 53–56, 59–60, 64–68, 71– 72 Crosson, Frederick, 248n6

C Cain, Patrick N., 8–9, 114–124, 307 Calvinism, 140, 155, 169 Canada, 5, 294 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty). See Piketty, Thomas Cartledge, Paul, 29n4 Catholicism, 139, 154–155, 200 Cheops, 25 Cherry, Kevin, 11, 232–245, 250n25, 308 Chrysippus, 133 Cicero, 118, 131–133, 136, 149n31, 161 classical political rationalism Christian pluralism and, 233– 235, 242–245 democracy and mixed regime, 240–242 overview, 232–233 State vs. Body Politic, 238–240 value of particular goods and, 235–238 classical reason Arendt on, 107–109

D Dale, A.M., 29n2 de Bakker, Matthieu, 29n3, 30n8, 30n15, 30n16, 31n18, 31n23, 31n24 De Jong, Irene, 29n3, 29n5, 30n16, 31n21 De Regno (Aquinas) on the Church, 123 divine rules and politics, 122– 124 on ideal government, 116–117 on kingship, 115, 118–121 on nature and reason, 120 overview, 114–115 Plato and, 120–121 on polity, 115–119 scripture, philosophy, and the ideal regime, 119–122 on tyranny, 115–117, 115–119, 118, 125n6 use of scripture, 121–122 Defense of the Constitutions of the United States (Adams), 11, 198, 205 Delphi, Oracle at, 61, 66, 281

312 democracy Antigone and, 7, 53, 55–56, 60, 141 aristocracy and, 203–204, 219 Aristotle and, 240–242, 250n22 boundless demos, 169 branches of government and, 206, 211, 221 Canada and, 5 capitalism and, 12–13 Christian pluralism and, 233 citizenship and, 101 classical rationalism and, 4, 11, 233, 236–238 community and, 154, 156 democratical mixture, 204, 206, 211 demystification of the world through, 169–202 education and, 13 Europe and, 1, 5, 126 freedom of speech and, 53–60 Hobbes on, 152–153, 157, 166, 168–169 just regimes and, 115, 119 legitimate borders and, 151– 152, 166 Maritain on, 242–245, 250n28, 250n29, 250n37 Millian, 72 mixed regime and, 240–242 neoliberalism and, 5 original democracy, 157–158, 165 origins of, 126–127 Pericles and, 48, 50 Piketty on, 252–254, 258, 260– 261 Plato and, 147n2 politics and, 58, 60 religious liberty and, 141 republics and, 147n2, 152 Simon on, 240–242, 248n6, 249n16 Socrates and, 7, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 63, 71–72

Index sovereign authorizatoin and, 9 the state and, 238–240 Demosthenes, 6, 39–47, 40–43, 49– 50, 52n3. See also Thucydides Dewald, Carolyn, 29n6 Dewey, John, 271 Diderot, 198 Diogenes Laertius, 132 divine rules and politics, 122–124 Dobski, Bernard J., 6, 33–51, 308 Dottin, Erskine, 290 Dryzek, John, 278 Durkheim, Émile, 176 E Education as aristocratic tradition, 303– 304 Aristotle and, 295–298 capitalism and, 291–293 citizenship and, 289–290 economy of, 288–295 humanity-based, 290–291 market-based approach to, 288– 295 Marx and, 295–299 norms and, 293–294 overview, 287–288 strengths of critical education, 301–303 theoretical synthesis, 295–299 will to change and, 299–301 Egypt, 16–27, 29n5, 30n15, 31n19, 31n20, 48, 80–81, 83 Encyclopaedists, 198 Enlightenment, 1, 4, 10–11, 107, 170, 184, 190, 224, 277, 281 Ennobling of Democracy (Pangle), 12, 226n8, 266–270, 278, 282 See also Pangle, Thomas Erastianism, 140, 169 Eros and Civilization (Marcuse), 280 Evans, Joseph, 249n20

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe F Filmer, Robert, 154 Finnis, John, 124n1, 148n6 Fischer, Ernst, 305n13 Forsyth, Murray, 167 Foster, Edith, 33 friendship, 10, 65, 115, 122, 124n4, 191, 218, 239, 244–245, 249n20, 250n36 Frye, Northrup, 280–281, 285n86 G Galston, Willialm, 248n2 Gass, Michael, 148n21 Gauthier, David, 165 Geddert, Jeremy Seth, 9, 126–143, 308 Gellner, Ernest, 172n1 gender, 54–55, 299 Gray, Vivienne, 29n1 Greenwood, Emily, 29n4 Grethlein, Jonas, 29n2 Grotius, Hugo Christianity and, 135–137 Cicero and, 131–133, 136 on human nature, 133 on justice, 129–131, 134–135, 138–139 kathekon and, 132–136, 138, 141–142, 148n28, 149n30 katorthoma and, 132–136, 138, 141, 148n28, 149n30, 150n47 modern Europe and, 142–143 Plato and, 137–138 on politics and religion, 137– 139 on religion and need for political oversight, 140–142 Right of War and Peace, 129– 131 scholarship on, 127–129 Stoicism and, 131–136 Thirty Years’ War and, 126–127

313

H Haduong, Thang Teddy, 45, 52n3 Haggenmacher, Peter, 148n5 Hamilton, Alexander, 206, 212–217, 219–220, 227n15, 229n42 Hanson, Victor Davis, 36 Hegel, G.W.F., 1, 59, 301, 303 Heidegger, Martin, 103, 224, 266, 270–271, 274, 276–277, 283n3, 288 Helen in Egypt, 6, 16–20, 22–24 Herodotus, 6, 16–27. See also Histories (Herodotus) Hesiod, 16, 29n5, 30n7, 38–39, 47 Heubeck, Alfred, 29n2 Histories (Herodotus) Achaeens, 22–23 beauty in, 18–19, 23 destruction of Troy, 24 gods in, 24–25 Homer in, 21–27 hospitality, 20 Proteus, 17, 20, 23–24, 29n5, 30n15 Trojan War Egyptian view of, 25–26 Homer’s view of, 24–25 History (Thucydides) Demosthenes in Aetolia, 40–43 manner and Periclean Athens, 47–51 natural disasters and seasons in, 34–37 nature and piety, 44–47 nature as guide in, 37–40 overview, 33–34 Hittinger, John P., 248n4, 249n9, 249n21, 250n30 Hobbes, Thomas Aristotle and, 103–104, 106– 107 classical liberalism and, 8 cultural revolution and, 2, 104– 105 Grotius and, 142, 149n30, 149n38

314 individual rights and, 1, 105– 106, 108–109 liberalism and, 106 Montesquieu and, 179–180, 189–191 Socrates and, 2 super-sensory and, 107 theory of sovereign authorization, 9–10 contract theory and, 153– 159 Leviathan, 159–166 on nations and borders, 166–170 overview, 151–153 Hobsbawm, E.J., 172n1 Homer, 6, 16–17, 21–27, 31n21, 31n22, 31n23, 39, 88, 93n2 honor, 65, 177, 182, 195n36, 222, 226n8 Hornblower, Simon, 45 I Internal Revenue Service, 253 internationalism, 212 Ismene, 55, 64, 66–68 J Jacobs, Jonathan, 98 Jefferson, Thomas, 11, 198–199, 202, 204–205, 223, 227n13, 228n28 K kathekon, 132–136, 138, 141–142, 148n28, 149n30 katorthoma, 132–136, 138, 141, 148n28, 149n30, 150n47 Kierkegaard, Søren, 1 King David, 121 King Henry IV, 127 King Louis XIII, 127 King Louis XIV, 182, 200, 208 King Louis XVI, 198 kinship, 54–55, 59–60, 117, 279 Kirkpatrick, Jennet, 55

Index Klonoski, Richard J., 250n35 Koyzis, David, 235, 249n15 Kraynak, Robert P., 170 Kries, Douglas, 250n25 Kuic, Vukan, 233 L Laks, André, 93n4, 95n28, 96n31 Lateiner, Donald, 31n21 Layman, Geoffrey, 248n2 Leibowitz, David, 75n52 Livingstone, David, 112n37 Lloyd, A.B., 29n5 Locke, John, 172n3, 182, 188, 200, 208, 273 Anti-Federalists and, 208–209, 212, 214, 221 Hobbes and, 190 liberalism and, 10, 177 on monarchy, 188 Montesquieu and, 178–179, 182–183, 188 natural rights and, 1–3, 219 Pangle and, 273 property and, 180, 182–183 on sovereigns, 172n3 Turgot and, 198–200, 202, 206 logos, 4, 30n16, 139, 143, 240 Long, A.A., 36, 132, 139 love in Antigone, 55, 68 citizenship and, 205, 210, 213, 239, 267 equality and, 181 familial, 71–72 God and, 122, 205, 250n28 kinship and, 279–280 liberty and, 273 self-love, 77, 94n7 Lycurgus, 180–181, 186, 196n51 Lyotard, Jean François, 270–273 M Madison, James, 204, 206, 215–222, 229n40, 229n41, 235, 238, 241

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe Man and the State (Maritain), 11, 233, 239, 248n6, 249n8, 251n39 Manent, Pierre, 261 Mansfield, Harvey C., 153, 226n7 Marcuse, Herbert, 280 Maritain, Jacques Christian pluralism and, 233– 235, 242 classical political rationalism, 233–235, 242–245 on man vs. State, 238–240 Martinich, A.P., 172n4 Marx, Karl, 3, 5, 200–201, 224, 225n6, 288, 293, 295, 298–304 Mason, Mark, 289–290 Mayhew, Robert, 249n12 McCarty, Nolan, 248n2 McCloskey, Deirdre, 262n4, 264n12 McGrane, David, 5 McInerny, Ralph, 248n6, 251n39 McNeill, William, 264n12 Melampus, 16 Menelaus, 19, 30n15, 30n16 Mezei, Baláz, 249n19 Mill, John Stuart, 7, 56–57, 60, 71– 72 Miller, David, 172n1 mimƝsis, 87, 95n28 Mixed regimes, 8, 114, 119, 125n7, 217, 221, 240–241 Montesquieu on alternative liberalisms, 191 ancient philosophy and, 185– 187 Aristotle and, 186–187 Kant and, 185 Locke and, 178–179, 182–183, 188 on Lycurgus, 180–181 on natural rights history and, 184–188 materialism and, 177–178 modern philosophy as way of life, 188–192 modern rationalism and, 178

315

problem of property, 179, 182, 184 rejection of, 176 revision of Lockean liberalism, 178–179 on philosophic sociability, 190– 191 Plato and, 186–187 science and, 177–178 on skepticism of high ideals in moderation, 189–190 Spirit of Laws, 10, 176, 180, 183, 185–186, 188–192, 208, 213 More, Thomas, 181 Mt. Aetna, 38, 43 Mycerinus, 25 N Narcissus, 280–282 nationalism borders and, 166 Brexit and, 263n11 capital and, 253 education and, 291 liberalism and, 152, 166, 170 myth and, 9–10, 152, 166–167, 170, 172n1 sovereign authorization and, 151 natural rights Anti-Federalists and, 208 Enlightenment and, 1 Grotius and, 9, 128, 133, 135 individuals and, 156 modern political philosophy and, 2 Montesquieu on history, 184, 188 materialism and, 177–178 modern philosophy as way of life, 188–192 modern rationalism and, 178 problem of property, 179, 182, 184 rejection of, 176

316 revision of Lockean liberalism, 178–179 Pangle on, 12, 268–269, 273, 275 postmodernism and, 269, 275– 276, 278 sovereign and, 164 Thucydides on, 33 Turgot on, 200 natural world, 34 Newell, Waller, 105–107 Nicgorski, Walter, 248n6 Nicias, 35, 37–38, 46–47, 50 Nietzshe, Friedrich, 1, 103, 173, 226n7, 266–269, 276, 283n3, 290 Nussbaum, Martha, 4, 249n10 O O’Gieblyn, Meghan, 110n2 Obama, Barack, 254 Odyssey (Homer), 17 Oedipus, 64 oikeosis, 279 On Liberty (Mill), 7, 56 Orwin, Clifford, 33, 163, 165, 173n9 P Pangle, Thomas on childhood vs. maturation, 272–275 Ennobling of Democracy on citizenship, 267 on education, 267–268 on human superiority, 269– 270 overview, 266–267 postmodernism and, 268– 269 Locke and, 273 Rorty and, 270–271, 276–277, 280–282 Socrates and, 267–268, 270, 275–277

Index on strength vs. weakness, 270– 272 Parker, Henry, 153, 155, 227n18, 228n32, 228n35 Peace of Westphalia (1648), 126 Pederson, Helena, 278, 285n66 Peloponnesian War, 6, 34, 42, 48 Philosophy of Democratic Government (Simon), 11, 233 Philosophy of Political Myth, A (Bottici), 3 Piketty, Thomas Capital in the Twenty-First Century (CITC) eliminating public debt, 256–259 overview, 252–253 poltical reform, 259–261 proposed tax on capital, 253–256 on democracy and wealth, 252– 253 on economic protectionism, 253 on European Union, 259–260 on Germany, 257 on inflation, 257–258 Pitkin, Hanna, 153, 161–162 Planinc, Emma, 12–13, 266–282, 308 Plato. See also tragedy Laws, 76–79, 87–88, 92–93, 296 Phaedrus, 92 Republic, 7–8, 76–77, 88, 93n4, 120, 137–138 Symposium, 92, 95n23 Plutarch, 180–181, 186, 274 political polarization, 11, 232, 248n2 Porter, Jene, 305n10 postmodernism Aristotle and, 103 Marxism and, 5 Montesquieu and, 177 Pangle on, 12, 266–282 rationalism and, 2–3 Rousseau and, 222–225

Classical Rationalism and the Politics of Europe Socratic philosophy and, 4 Proietti, Gerald, 33 Prometheus, 280–281 Proteus, 17, 20, 23–24, 29n5, 30n15 Pythia, 61 Q Quesnay, François, 198 R Rabbie, Edwin, 149n39 Rathnam, Lindsay Mahon, 6, 16–27, 308 rationalism ancient, 68–72 Anti-Federalists and, 208 Aquinas and, 120 classical, 1–6, 10–12 classical political rationalism, 233–235, 242–245 Maritain on, 242–245 Pangle on, 270–271, 279–282 Rousseau on, 224–225 scientific, 36 Socratic, 1, 5, 10 Rauch, Jonathan, 248n3 Rawls, John, 244, 249n10, 265n14 republicanism, 2, 10–11, 177, 180– 182, 185–187, 193n7, 198–199 Robertson, Heather-Jane, 289–290, 292, 294 Roochnik, David, 95n23 Rorty, Richard, 270–271, 276–277, 280–282 Runciman, David, 160, 167, 172n7 S sacred doctrine, 124n3 Said, Suzanne, 31n24, 32n33 Salkever, Steven, 99, 103 Sandel, Michael, 245 Sauvé Meyer, Susan, 87–89, 94n12, 95n28, 95n29, 96n36 Saxonhouse, Arlene, 54, 56, 58–60 Schall, James, 233 Schneewind, Jerome, 148n5

317

Scripture, 1–3, 8, 113–114, 119–123 Sedley, D.N., 132 Seneca, 136 Shackleton, Robert, 190 Sicily, 35, 39–40, 43, 47 Sigmund, Paul, 250n31 Simon, Yves, 11, 233–241, 248n1, 248n6, 249n9, 249n16, 249n19, 250n22, 250n27, 250n30, 250n36 Sjoholm, Cecilia, 74n11 Skinner, Quentin, 153, 172n5, 193n7 Skultety, Steven C., 250n33 Smith, Adam, 198, 302 Smith, Bonnie G., 183, 195n38 Smith, Travis, 106, 108 Sokolon, Marlene, 4 Solomon, Robert, 278–279 Sophocles, 7, 44, 53–55, 59–60, 62, 64, 88 sovereign authorization, 9–10, 85, 106, 151–153, 158–166, 170. See also Hobbes, Thomas Sparta, 37, 39–42, 44–45, 48, 50, 70–71, 180–181, 193n7, 244, 250n32, 296 Spirit of Laws (Montesquieu), 10, 176, 180, 183, 185–186, 188– 192, 208, 213 Steiner, Gary, 279 Steuart, James, 180 Stobaeus, 132 Stoicism, 9, 129, 131–135, 139, 148n28, 149n31 kathekon, 132–136, 138, 141– 142, 148n28, 149n30 katorthoma, 132–136, 138, 141, 148n28, 149n30, 150n47 oikeiois, 279 Straumann, Benjamin, 131, 148n16, 148n28, 149n30 Strauss, Leo, 33–34, 46, 52n2, 96n36, 188, 248n5 Suarez, Francisco, 153–154

318 Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 114, 124n3, 125n7, 249n14 T taxes, 12, 195n35, 195n36, 215, 252–261, 262n5, 263n6, 263n10, 264n12, 264n13 telos, 139, 280 Tessitore, Aristide, 111n12 Thirty Years’ War, 126–127 Thomas, Rosalind, 29n1 Thucydides, 6, 33–51, 52n1, 52n2, 203–204, 226n9. See also History (Thucydides) Tiresias, 55 Tocqueville, Alexander de, 138, 141, 201, 226n7, 238 tragedy beauty and, 78–79 citizenship and, 77–78 education and, 79–80 human puppet and its tragic flaw, 78–87 identification of regime with, 77–78 Laws, 76–79, 87–88, 92–93, 296 mimƝsis and, 87, 95n28 overview, 76–78 Sauvé Meyer on, 88–89 tragic persistence of, 87–92 Trojan War, 6, 16, 19, 22–25, 27, 30n15, 31n19, 31n24, 32n33 Trump, Donald, 232, 253, 258, 264n12 Tuck, Richard, 128, 147n5, 225n5 Turgot, Baron de Laune Adams and attempt to answer, 202–206 reaction to letter, 198–199 Anti-Federalists and, 209, 212, 220

Index classical liberalism and, 10–11, 198 letter to Price, 199–202 Rousseau and, 223–224 Twelve Tables, 126 U Unitarianism, 205 universalism, 151, 177, 192, 205, 224 V Van Dam, Harm-Jam, 149n33 Vandiver, Elizabeth, 30n16 Villey, Michel, 147n5 Voltaire, 176–177, 184, 189, 193n8, 194n12, 198 W Waldron, Jeremy, 160 Ward, Ann, 1–13, 53–72, 309 Ward, Lee, 151–170, 309 Warrender, Howard, 165 Waters, Kenneth H., 31n28 Watson, Janell, 285n77 Wilson, James Lindley, 250n25 Witte, John F., 288 Wood, Ellen, 303 X xeinia, 19, 30n15 Y Yack, Bernard, 250n35 Z Zagorin, Perez, 153, 167 Zeus, 23, 66, 238 Zuckert, Catherine, 58–59 Zuckert, Michael, 192n1