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October 19, 2005
Hello everyone,
Have you ever had the experience of reading something—especially something that later seemed more pertinent or profound than you might have initially thought—and then forgetting where you read it? And, after searching high and low, have you ever had the experience of finally finding what it was you were reading and suddenly realizing that the actual words on the page were not nearly as profound as you remembered them being? I can see it now: some of you are saying: “Yeah, as a matter of fact, a couple of your newsletters struck me in very much that same way.” (Smile.) In all seriousness, that sort of thing happens in my world rather frequently. That is certainly what happened this time around as I was thinking of the topic I felt compelled to write about this week. I had read a quotation about how, of all the different ways in which learning takes place, we learn best and most rapidly by role models. At least, that is what I thought I read. What I actually read was just a little bit different.
The October 2005 issue of Reader’s Digest ran a feature spanning several articles entitled “The Secret Lives of Men: What They Think, Feel and Hide.” The first article, written by Dianne Hales, was entitled “Big Boys Don’t Cry—and Other Myths About Men and Their Emotions” and provided quite an accurate overview of how many men do in fact think and feel and the vulnerabilities they try to hide. Among the suggestive subheadings were “Male Brain Drain,” “Why Men Explode,” and “Women, Be Aware.” A second article—written by William Speed Weed, a man who has surely heard many witticisms about his name—became an idle read a day or two ago while I was converting one of the academic Explorations In Renaissance Culture journals for Dr. Baumlin. I would scan a page while reading a paragraph, scan another page while reading another paragraph, and so on, nearly completing “‘I Love You, Man!’: The Nuts and Bolts of Male Friendship” in the process. Perhaps it was because of the fashion in which I was reading—half-heartedly, piecemeal, my mind freely wandering through the various events and encounters of my day—but somehow one little paragraph stuck with me, morphing into something else altogether in my mind. The paragraphs leading up to it describe the shared friendship between Larry Hirschberger and Gary Fine, two New York staters who both underwent a divorce within the same year and both roomed together during that difficult period, taking turns reading to each other’s children, doing the dishes, and otherwise providing support for one another. Since that time, both have remarried and moved into separate homes with their families,
. . . but they’re still close friends, having bonded over a common emotional event in their lives.
[Michael] Kimmel [, a sociologist at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and author of The Gendered Society,] maintains it goes deeper than that: “Friendship is one of the major avenues of self-exploration” in life. We are wired to use our friends as mirrors for our own growth, so it’s no surprise that we reserve the special category of friendship for people who are like us, usually in age, temperament and curiosity. (Reader’s Digest. October 2005. 110.)
In retrospect, I can reconstruct to some degree why that last paragraph became larger than life to me. For one thing, I was thinking of how fortunate I am to have a small group of friends who meet in my home every Wednesday. We are all men, we all tend to be loners, we are all Christians (albeit holding some slightly unorthodox opinions here and there), we have all been divorced (to our shame), and we all share common intellectual interests. Certainly I would think of that camaraderie when reading about male friendships in a Reader’s Digest article. But I was also thinking of my desire to teach college and the things we have discussed in the classroom and during seminars about a quality liberal arts education consisting of far more than just the life of the mind. Recently, for example, the former roommate of one of my philosophy professors and the now dean of a prestigious university in New York traveled down to deliver a talk in which he recounted the early histories of several Ivy League schools and how they started out as being bastions not only of learning, but of socializing the young men to be the virtuous future leaders of their communities. Half of the curriculum or more happened outside the walls of the classroom in the “community of scholars” in which the older mentored the younger, the wiser those in search of wisdom, and the experienced those lacking in expertise. In sum, the assumption was that the best moral education can only be learned through practice and communicated by example, just as Aristotle maintained and James Baldwyn seconded many years later in his observation of youngsters: “Children have never been very good at listening to adults but they have never failed to imitate them” (qtd. in Wisdom quotes).
My mind now drifted even further as I thought of my many readings lately in my political theory class, a course that has been truly one of the most interesting I have taken in some time. In particular, I had written an essay for a test in which I contrasted Aristotle’s conception of the ideal polis with Hobbes’ notion of “Leviathon,” the personified commonwealth, preferably consolidated in a monarchy (by Hobbes’ estimate). Since this particular newsletter we are now reading together is informal and “chatty”—right now with all the stress of looking into graduate schools and so forth I feel a need for “informal and ‘chatty’”—we will excerpt the bulk of that paper before picking up again with our theme. This will do double-duty, as it allows me my informal demeanor while providing some context for these thinkers and their arguments and how they tie into Reader’s Digest articles about men and their friendships. Think of yourself sitting in my living room with the guys on Wednesday night, if you like, as I read to you the test paper that has so recently occupied my time and attention the previous week in class. I have also taken the liberty to insert parenthetical comments in square brackets [like this] to highlight things I see in retrospect that might not have been as clear as they could have been; page numbers, incidentally, correspond to Princeton Readings in Political Thought edited by Mitchell Cohen and Nicole Fermon. Allow me to clear my throat before I begin—“ahem!”—and take one more swig from my coffee cup to both whet and wet “my whistle.”
Aristotle vs. Hobbes: Political Animal or Just Plain Beast?
Aristotle’s Politics, written between three- and four-hundred years before the birth of Christ, sets forth a view of the political nature of mankind that is markedly different from the position staked out by Hobbes nearly two millennia later in Leviathan. Our task is to examine each of these views in turn and decide which, if either, is most persuasive, taking as our standard of measure the level of truthfulness or realistic quality the claims hold and paying comparatively less attention to how well or how poorly the arguments themselves might have been framed. We are prepared to argue that while Aristotle’s conception is the more persuasive of the two, Hobbes should not be so readily dismissed either, for he also has a lesson to offer us, embittered though he might at times seem.
The Ideal Aristotelian Polity
Our very word “politics” is a derivation of the Greek word politēs (“citizen”), itself ultimately from polis (“city”). This is telling, for the first known Western mind to write a treatise on the subject—appropriately entitled The Politics—argues that “the polis is prior in the order of nature to the family and the individual” (Aristotle 110). [We could argue that Plato’s Republic was truly the first political treatise, but it was not directly about politics per se and thus our claim stands.] Aristotle presents two scenarios of man prior to (or apart from) the polis in which he either has no need of virtue (because he has become like the gods) or else is “worse than all the others in the indulgence of lust and gluttony” (110). It is important to note that for Aristotle, mankind is born “with arms . . . intended to serve the purposes of moral prudence and virtue, but which may be used in preference to opposite ends” (110). In other words, morality and virtue are natural goods but mankind can potentially misuse his latent potentiality, becoming morally imprudent and riddled through with vice. Given the equal and opposite potentialities of human nature to go either the way of the gods or the way of the beasts, the role of the polis—and by extension of politics—is to inculcate justice, each man seeing how the individual good plays out over the assembly until he arrives at a sense of the collective just.
We said that from the word polis (“city”) is derived from the word politēs (“citizen”): because “a state is a compound made up of citizens,” argues Aristotle, we must therefore define citizenship before we can address the question of the state (Aristotle 113). Ruling out persons who merely reside in a given state or enjoy its privileges as the basis for his definition, Aristotle characterizes a citizen as one “who enjoys the right of sharing in deliberative of judicial office” and in turn defines the state as “a body of such persons adequate in number” to be self-sufficient (114). A “worthy citizen” is one who well performs the “double capacity . . . in knowing both how to rule and how to obey” (116). A “good ruler,” by extension, having first been ruled just as in the military one travels up the ranks to general by first being a captain and then a colonel, has now added “prudence” to his other virtues (116). This addition of “prudence” is alone what distinguishes him as “good ruler,” for even as “worthy subject” he has learned virtues such as temperance, courage, and justice (117). Therefore, by being a citizen and performing his duty well, first being ruled and then ruling himself, he perfects the arms with which he was born to enact moral prudence and virtue (110). Thus, at least in this sense, “the polis is prior in the order of nature to the family and the individual” and may perhaps be prior ontologically as well, given the common Greek conception of an eternal cosmos without the apparent beginning which the theology and science of our own day mutually posit (however different their final conception) (110).
The Hobbesian Brute and his Leviathan Tamer
Writing approximately two-thousand years later in a time of political turmoil, Hobbes sees a slightly different scenario played out upon the European landscape. For him, men naturally strive for power that they can wield for “some future apparent good,” whether this power be original (as in characteristics endowed at birth or refined by skill) or instrumental (as in luck, wealth, friends, and other sources of power external to themselves) (Hobbes 206). The “future apparent good” for which they exercise their power is namely self-preservation, and, especially when that is secured, self-indulgence: “[i]f any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in their way to their end, which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another” (207—emphasis my own). Mankind is for all intents and purposes created equal (at least in the sense that the weaker can overpower the stronger by cunning or other means of machination), and this factor contributes in part to the “three principle causes of quarrel” that exists within the human race by nature: “competition [,] diffidence [, and] glory [-seeking]” (208). Men, equal (or otherwise able to equalize their power), are in competition for material resources, mutually fear and distrust one another, and vie for glory and honor.
The picture that begins to emerge beneath Hobbes’ fingers is far different than Aristotle’s mankind born to (teleologically construed?) noble ends (though of course capable of using his attributes contrariwise): “Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man” (Hobbes 208). Therefore, the very thing that is needed is just such a “common power to keep them all in awe”—to hold over them the power of fear of their life and liberty (as all men seek self-preservation; it is their one unarguable right)—for otherwise, war is the natural state of man, and his life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (208). This common power—this “great Leviathan”—is not a ruler whose purpose it is to secure virtue or to produce worthy citizens; rather, this ruler is only in place to preserve the peace through a rule of fear, subduing the passions of men; “or rather, to speak more reverently,” he is a “mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and safety” (222). To this mighty Leviathan is given almost unlimited rights, granted him via contract by the governed in the interest of their peace and safety.
Summary and Contrast of the Two Thinkers
Aristotle claims that real justice exists, but it can only be realized fully in the individual by first existing in the polis. Participation in politics as a citizen is essential, both in being ruled and in ruling, in order to bring out the latent perfection in man. Human nature itself is designed for noble ends but it nevertheless possesses the potential to become corrupted and turn men into beasts: that is why the polis is needed in the first place. By contrast, in Hobbes’ world, men are by nature beastly and whatever virtue might be able to be effected in them will be accomplished only by the fear instilled by the rule of an absolute monarch. Man’s natural instinct is self-preservation and self-indulgence and this leads to warfare in his natural state; goods and honor are the aims for which he competitively wields whatever power he can acquire, fueled by his mutual distrust. An absolute sovereign is the be-all, end-all form of government: the only form that will ever ensure lasting peace and safety for all its citizens, whatever expense that may extract in fact from the liberty of the individual.
Concluding Observations
What are we to make of these two divergent conceptions of efficient politics, their desired ends, and the nature of man? Of great interest to me in framing this question is an extended quotation I read recently regarding the religious and philosophical systems in China, namely in regard to the so-called yin of Taoism and yang of Confucianism. I quote here in full:
The basic nature of human beings has been one of the great topics of discussion throughout the history of China. Is human nature good or bad or somewhere in between? This is not a theoretical question at all, because how one answers this question has crucial practical results. If human nature is basically good, it should be left on its own and trusted, and moral training, laws, and punishments are of little importance. If human nature is basically evil, human beings need strict moral education, stern laws, harsh punishments, and a strong ruler. A middle position is also possible: if human nature is neutral, human beings need education that is not coercive and a ruler who governs primarily through example. (Molloy, Michael. Experiencing the World’s Religions. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 238.)
This quotation strikes me as ready-made for the topic at hand, with Hobbes being the guru who sees human nature as basically evil and Aristotle the sage who sees it in a more neutral light. [Dr. Dutton’s note regarding Hobbes as the guru who sees a “basically evil” human nature merits mention; she writes: “Yes—though careful—we’re not evil or vicious—but rational in the state of nature and rationally seek to preserve ourselves as best we can, which leads to disastrous results.”] . . . There is a quotation attributed to Pseudo-Macarius (the anonymous author first believed to be Saint Macarius the Great), and while it is distinctively cloaked in the poetry of Christian theology, it seems particularly apropos here: “The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there.”
Everyone is capable, just as Aristotle suggests, of becoming more bestial or conversely becoming more divine-like in the cultivation of character, and there is a certain sense in which what we look for in others is what we find. If one begins with a Hobbesian first principle that sees the natural state of man as one of war—a claim that likely seemed empirically substantiated in his own time—then one is naturally going to seek “stern laws, harsh punishments, and a strong ruler” as our quotation suggests. It seems to me, however, that four centuries after Hobbes put quill to paper, the experiments in history we most loathe are precisely the jack-booted, totalitarian systems that reduce men to mere mechanical parts: it seems like the Leviathan was the very mechanism by which the monstrosity of human nature was mercilessly unleashed.
Extreme optimism in human virtue is likewise unwise, for the Leviathan of Auschwitz and other such “experiments”—regardless their pedigree—point to a possibility in human nature that we have seen played out in this recent historical drama: that beast-like depravity Aristotle ascribes to the uncouth outside the polis. Recognizing that man is not always a paragon of virtue and is ever subject to pride, the vice of vices, the Founding Fathers instituted a system of checks and balances that limited power and maximized liberty. That system is closer to an Aristotelian model than a Hobbesian one in a number of ways, though it can be—and in fact is repeatedly—faulted for its failure to produce truly moral citizens. In that regard, it more resembles a social contract in which men’s mutual self-interests are subjugated to a contractual agreement to ensure that my pat on your back results in your pat on mine.
In the end, I find Aristotle’s account more persuasive—if not more idealistic and difficult to achieve—because I think it more closely aligns with the reality of human nature as capable of both great good and great ill and generally not in possession of a great deal of either. We do tend toward vice in many ways when left to our own devices, but we are also capable of great acts of charity and virtue as well. When we see such elements modeled, we likewise tend to become better and more selfless persons, or at the very least more aware—and accordingly more ashamed—of the lingering selfishness we yet possess. Most of us secretly long for a better world, even if we have become disillusioned in our idealism, cynical of ever seeing its conception. To this end, my parting argument is pragmatic: If Hobbes is right in his materialistic positivism and reality is merely a social construct, I much prefer my fabrication—which much more closely parallels Aristotle’s—to his, idealized and difficult though mine may in fact be. Very few things truly worth having in life come easily, virtue chief among them.
Thus concludes the extended essay portion of the test I turned in to Dr. Dutton; I am a lifelong learner and her comments throughout, though more than favorable, highlighted some areas in which I could have tightened the paper up further. (So what do you say we don’t let her read this newsletter then, huh? -wink- Seriously, different audience, different purpose: we’re all sitting around my living room sipping coffee—remember?—and I’ve chuckled aloud more than once at my tongue-tied attempts at times to wrap my mouth around certain words: particularly the alliterative ones.)
If you recall, before we went off on an exegetical tangent about politic thinkers and their theories, we had been looking at a Reader’s Digest article that suggested that “[w]e are wired to use our friends as mirrors for our own growth, so it’s no surprise that we reserve the special category of friendship for people who are like us, usually in age, temperament and curiosity.” Somehow, through the course of thinking about my friends on Wednesday nights and Aristotle, Hobbes, and Confucius, this sentence morphed into the idea that of all the ways we learn, we are most impacted by the people in our lives. We may learn from books and from thinking and from countless other sources but in the end, we learn most—and most quickly—from the mirror of other persons. Of course we tend to congregate with people similar to us, but I also thought that—for better or worse—nearly everyone in our life influences us to some degree—just as we likewise influence them. In fact, since we have already spent so much time on political thinkers, let us take a look at what Michael Molloy has to say to us about Confucius and his conception of the perfect society:
The period in which Confucius was born was a time of social turmoil because of the disintegration of the feudal system. Seeing families and individuals suffering from the social disorder, Confucius concluded that society could function properly only if virtues were taught and lived.
The ideals of Confucius were two: he wanted to produce “excellent” individuals who could be social leaders, and he wanted to create a harmonious society. He believed that these ideals were complementary: excellent individuals would keep society harmonious [“just,” as Aristotle might say], and a harmonious society would nurture excellent individuals.
Confucius believed that each human being is capable of being good, refined and even great; but he differed from the Taoists because he was convinced that a human being cannot achieve those qualities in isolation. In his view, a human being becomes a full person only through the contributions of other people and through fulfilling one’s obligations to them. These other people include parents, teachers, friends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, ancestors, and even government ministers.
Confucius also believed that more than social interaction (which even animals have) is needed. For Confucius, that “more” is what makes ordinary human beings into excellent human beings, “superior persons.” What constitutes that “more”? What are the sources of human excellence?
According to Confucius, excellence comes partly from the cultivation of an individual’s virtue and intellect. Thus, education is essential. We should recognize, though, that for Confucius education meant more than knowledge; it also involved the development of skills in poetry, music, artistic appreciation, manners, and religious ritual. Confucius valued education because it transmitted the lessons of the past into the present. He believed that much of the wisdom required to produce excellent human beings is already expressed in the teachings of the great leaders of the past. Convinced that the past provides fine models for the present, Confucius thought that education could show the way to wise and happy living.
Moreover, Confucius saw civilization as a complicated and fragile creation; because of this he believed that civilized human beings must be full of respect and care. Care must be given to the young, who will continue human life on earth, and to the elders, who teach and pass on the traditions. There should be reverence for everything valuable that has been brought from earlier generations.
Confucius’s idea of a perfect society was one in which each member of society would be cared for and protected, and no one would feel abandoned. (Modern Western reality provides a possible contrast: in a city full of people an individual can feel utterly alone.) Confucius believed that a perfect society could come about if people played their social roles properly. His sense of social responsibility was codified in the five great relationships [on the level of the individual family, deference of (1) son to father, (2) younger sibling to elder sibling, (3) wife to husband, and on the societal level, esteem of (4) younger to elder, and (5) citizen to emperor]. (Molloy, Michael. Experiencing the World’s Religions. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 229–230—emphases in original.)
Much like Aristotle’s Politics and (at least originally) the philosophy of America’s Ivy League schools, Confucius sees value in bringing the wisdom of the past to bear on the knowledge of the present. In fact, just today in our reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau—an opponent of Hobbes and an early advocate of the democratic republic—we read a passage from On The Social Contract that fit well the conversation we are enjoying here; Rousseau writes of the public (as opposed to private) person: “Although in this [public] state [of coming together and interacting with other men] he deprives himself of several advantages given him by nature, he gains such great ones, his faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas broadened, his feelings ennobled, and his whole soul elevated to such a point that if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him beneath the condition he left, he ought ceaselessly to bless the happy moment that tore him away from it forever, and that changed him from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent man and being” (Princeton Readings 282). Rousseau sees our social interactions, whenever they are not thwarted by poor government, as raising us up above the level of animal, for in that state, “the impulse of appetite alone is slavery” (283). In short, we need one another in so many, many ways: among them, the ability to develop into beings of greatest potential. We must risk interpersonal relationships of all sorts if we wish to grow; perhaps another reason why that simple paragraph in Reader’s Digest morphed into more. In addition, I had recently read in John Powell’s book Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?: “What I am, at any given moment in the process of my becoming a person, will be determined by my relationships with those who love me or refuse to love me, with those whom I love or refuse to love.”
It is certain that a relationship will be only as good as its communication. If you and I can honestly tell each other who we are, that is, what we think, judge, feel, value, love, honor and esteem, hate, fear, desire, hope for, believe in and are committed to, then and then only can each of us grow. Then and then alone can each of us be what he really is, say what he really thinks, tell what he really feels, express what he really loves. This is the real meaning of authenticity as a person, that my exterior truly reflects my interior. It means I can be honest in the communication of my person to others. And this I cannot do unless you help me. Unless you help me, I cannot grow, or be happy, or really come alive.
I have to be free and able to say my thoughts to you, to tell you about my judgments and values, to expose to you my fears and frustrations, to admit to you my failures and shames, to share my triumphs, before I can really be sure what it is that I am and can become. I must be able to tell you who I am before I can know who I am. And I must know who I am before I can act truly, that is, in accordance with my true self. (Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?, 39—emphasis in original)
As you may recall in God in the Re-Creative Silence, we drew some lessons from Buddhism, noting that “‘life is already hard enough for each of us’ and that not only humans, but ‘every being that feels can suffer.’” This highlights all the more the importance of simple kindness as a virtue that not only benefits others but likewise bolsters us as well. In fact, the secret to happiness lies precisely in the good-will and benevolence we express to other living creatures, whether human or otherwise. The man who is ill-tempered and cruel to man and beast is not a happy man; the man who smiles frequently and has true compassion glinting in his gaze gives back to himself as much or more happiness than he gives away to others. He is the personification of such earthy statements as “Give and it shall be given unto you.” (Forgive and be forgiven?)
Such things were stewing in the back of my mind as I thought to myself how valuable friendships are, perhaps in part framed by the Reader’s Digest article that continues on talking about the need for (1) disclosure, (2) reciprocity, and (3) intention, and how we need one another in many ways. The things that we most value in life are always emotional and relational in nature; the things that most bother us are likewise the same: we might claim that we are plagued by intellectual angst but with a bit of sober analysis we will soon discover that such plagues us precisely because it is registering as emotional unrest. If we did not feel a sense of uneasiness, we would not care: intellect alone is neither hot nor cool which is why it runs the risk of running cold.
Our perspective of life has much to do with our emotional response to any given situation and that response in turn shapes us, shapes the people we encounter, and begins to determine more and more the kind of company we keep. It has been my observation that within certain sectors of Christianity we can become so focused on our dogmas and our creeds that we lose sight of common sense and the beauty of loving others; so quickly, we can turn and devour one another for real but “wrong” answers and semblances of impiety that speak more of our own straight-laced hypocrisy than of another’s breach of faith. We need spiritual truth to be certain, but there has to be a balance between truth and love and if we were honest, most of us would have to admit that we are often a bit lacking in the love department: if we err, it is usually too far to the cerebral side. Yet we can cultivate virtuous habits if we but will it: we can choose to be friendly and to smile and soon enough we find that such choices become easier, we discover that we genuinely feel friendlier, and we are amazed that the smile comes with much less effort. Indeed, it may even startle us in a delightful way to suddenly realize that we are in fact smiling.
So what do you think? Pull your chair closer and speak candidly with me. And while we are at it, anyone for some more coffee? I don’t know about you, but my throat is rather dry and scratchy right now for some odd reason; I have been listening to myself talk long enough for one evening at least. But just so that you know, the smile on my face is real. :)
God bless,
Eric
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