M. M. Thomas

Reflections on History, Literature, and Philosophy

Philosophy

The Young Mr. Lincoln

by M. M. Thomas on posted in ,

Statesmanship in a democracy necessarily consists, in part, of the capacity and will to restrain the community’s worst impulses. A democratic people, owing to its engagement in the political process, regularly becomes animated – sometimes to the point of frenzy – by the issues about which it must deliberate. The various passions, as the old books call them, of a democratic people often run directly contrary to even previously agreed-upon standards of justice. Extrajudicial killings – lynchings – testify to this phenomenon most notoriously. The community has previously agreed that punishment for some crime or alleged crime will be determined by a structured judicial process. Yet, faced with the spectacle of what it perceives immediately to be a crime, without due consideration of whether it is, in fact, a crime, the community, in a fit of madness and stimulated by its coalescence into a vanguard of the vengeful, takes matters into its own hands, apprehending and slaying the accused – no trial, no delays. The matter, resolved in complete discordance with established procedures and staining the individual conscience of each member of the mob, is, nevertheless, settled satisfactorily to restore harmony to the community. We note, in passing, that this process is suggestive of Girard’s conception of the skapegoat; an entity whose sacrifice performs the essential function of resolving a tension within a community that otherwise would destroy the community itself.

The defender of the accused, in seeking to bring about a trial of the accused by means of established legal procedures, is also the defender of law – an ultimately rational and civilizing force – against emotion, impulse, and the pure will of the accusers. There can be no civilization without law; it is, however imperfect, the only method to resolve disputes without making an ultimate appeal to force. In political circumstances without rule of law, the strong always dominate the weak. This is not to say that, in political circumstances with rule of law, the strong never dominate the weak; in truth, the majority of time, the strong still do dominate the weak. But in such a system, the weak at least have the possibility of protection and redress. States, in contradistinction from communities or nations, understand themselves as essentially legal entities, whose legitimacy grounded in frameworks that determine the ‘rules of the game’ of political life within them. A nation derives its legitimacy exclusively from its identity; what it is, as opposed to frameworks it has elected to adopt, as in the case of a state. A state can change as the result of conscious decisionmaking; a nation can change only as part of a more general process whereby a new identity is gradually and intuitively assimilated by its members.

The United States of America is a state more than its inhabitants are a nation because the conditions its inhabitants must accept to belong to it are legal in character. The requirements for citizenship are clearly defined; they include nothing about identity or self-identity. They are external insofar as they are, in principle, attainable by any individual. The possession of citizenship is sufficient to be an American.

The tension between what the community seems to collectively desire at a given moment and the restraints on what the community is able to legally do in pursuit of what it desires is frequently observed in American history. One of the most famous examples that comes to mind is John Adams’ defense of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. Adams determined to defend the soldiers, whom the community, or in any case, the driving elements of the community, desired to lynch. Adams, by successfully defending the soldiers, defended the rule of law as something of greater importance than the outcome of any individual dispute or controversy. He also managed to impose upon an unruly assembly the acceptance of facts that made the persecution of the soldier manifestly unjust. Facts are stubborn things because the community may never fully accept them as true but is compelled, by law, to act as if they are true. In a sense, the law is the mechanism to which the rational person can appeal to impose his rational arguments upon those who may never agree with him on an intellectual basis. It is, often, foolishness to believe people can be won over or persuaded by good arguments and the power of the law functions as an intermediate – but more elevated – step between the extreme positions of accepting the community’s passionate position as the basis for further action and of using pure force to compel the community to accept a version of events contrary to its own.

The summit of statesmanship in a democracy, however, is not, in fact, using the law to force compliance but persuading the community with arguments which appeal to its particular sensibilities. It is very possible to make a good argument that is unpersuasive and a bad argument that is persuasive. This frequently happens with scientific or highly technical topics. The specialist can satisfactorily demonstrate the truth of his position on such and such by furnishing evidence which, from the standpoint of other specialists, is indisputable and yet fail to convince non-specialists – members of the general public – of his position by poorly calibrating or communicating his position. The politician – or the statesman, which is a more highly developed version of the politician – is unconcerned with making the most valid argument and wholly concerned with making the most persuasive one. Importantly, the statesman and specialist can have the same fundamental position on a question; it is the manner in which each presents his position that differs. In a democracy, the passions of the people must be understood so that they may be directed toward constructive ends and away from actions that violate the principles of individual liberty.

The Young Mr. Lincoln, released in 1939 and starring Henry Fonda in the title role, is concerned with these questions. The plot centers around a trial of two young men for murder and presents Lincoln as displaying his well-known characteristics of homely wisdom and wit, shrewd judgment of people, and quiet self-confidence of a man certain in the justice of his cause and of his own abilities to advance that cause. The accused are defended by Lincoln, who, in the scene immediately following that in which the murder occurs, prevents their lynching at the hands of a furious and drunken mob by appealing to the mob in language it can understand, successfully persuading it to disperse. Lincoln comes to get to know the young men’s family and his humanity and sympathy for the poor and helpless is distinctly felt throughout the course of these interactions. We are, perhaps, asked to perceive in this family – the mother of which cannot read or write – the antebellum slave population, which Lincoln would later do so much to defend and safeguard. It is the first act of Lincoln’s great drama – or, perhaps more appropriately, it is the education of Lincoln, a sort of Bildungsroman, in film, of the American statesman.

Much of the film, indeed, foreshadows Lincoln’s later life. He is acquainted with Mary Todd and, at the same time, shown to lack the social graces, which, even once in Washington society, he never acquired. He is portrayed as in competition with Stephen Douglas, who is portrayed, somewhat, as Lincoln’s dandified antithesis, even as Douglas has little actual role in the film’s plot. We are given some sense of Lincoln’s sympathetic position toward the South, which was later reflected in his efforts to restrain the more radical elements of the Republican Party, by his playing of ‘Dixie’ on the strange (to 21st century audiences) instrument known as a mouth organ. His political genius is manifest, but understood to be almost purely the result of natural ability – an intuition for what action, in a particular situation, is not only most effective, but most congruent to his character. It is doubtful that the film has exaggerated these themes beyond due proportion; Lincoln’s achievement, like that of Washington, was the natural outgrowth of who he was as opposed to what he learned to be.

Lincoln’s ultimately successful defense of the young men hinged on his exploitation of a contradiction in the testimony of the key witness. The witness alleged that he was able to observe the murder take place from a great distance because the moon was full and illuminated the struggle between the accused and the victim. A consensus begins to emerge among the trial’s observers – including Douglas, who even issues a statement to the press criticizing Lincoln’s handling of the case – that the men will be convicted and hanged. On the final day, Lincoln, who rejected an offer by the judge the previous night to use his influence to turn the case over to a more experienced lawyer, reveals that the witness’s testimony could not be true because, according to an almanac, the moon was nowhere near full at the time of the murder. The revelation of this fact, acquired by Lincoln through his knowledge of books, in this case an almanac, turns the trial around and enables Lincoln to demonstrate that the witness was, in fact, the murderer.

In a sense, democratic politics – especially in the particularly American system of government – is well-illustrated by the film, beyond the representation of Lincoln as a democratic statesman. The jury is populated by apparently ignorant and easily-impressionable individuals, who are effectively handled by Lincoln’s clever, homely jokes and salt-of-the-earth references. We get the sense that a real injustice was on the verge of being consummated, but for Lincoln; perhaps this suggests the indispensability of good leadership, even in systems which, due to their democratic basis and possession of institutions that check and balance each other, are presumed to not require exceptional leaders.

The Courtier

by M. M. Thomas on posted in ,

How do we begin to describe the historical phenomenon known as the Renaissance? No doubt, this word is immediately understood as referring to one of the most profound transformations in thought, culture, and politics of all time. In a simple way, the Renaissance marks the beginning of the modern world as distinguished from antiquity and, although the period is considered to have lasted several centuries, we detect a clear difference between the world view of those individuals who lived during the Renaissance and those who lived before it. One famous illustration that is often cited in defense of this point is Petrarch’s climbing of Mount Ventoux, representing a degree of curiosity about the world which the ancients apparently lacked.

I, for my part, think the difference is most obvious when we consider the ways in which the Renaissance thinkers needed to attempt to reconcile the apparently competing systems of Medieval, Christian thought and the philosophies of the ancients. The 15th century, in which most of the previously lost Greek and Roman writers were rediscovered or reintroduced into Italy, is, in my opinion, more critical than the previous centuries in characterizing the Renaissance. Dante, although he wrote in Italian and modeled his Divine Comedy on Virgil’s Aeneid, was the last and greatest of the Medieval thinkers. Petrarch and Boccaccio belonged, to be sure, to the Renaissance, but their works lacked the learning – because they lacked the texts – necessary to produce a reaction to antiquity which begins from a standpoint of nearly full understanding of what antiquity actually was.

How did this ‘full’ understanding ultimately come about? Ultimately through the reintroduction into Europe of Greek texts, which, unlike Roman texts, had almost entirely been lost during the Middle Ages, apart from imperfect Latin translations of certain works, most importantly those of Aristotle. The Greek world-view as reflected in the texts of Thucydides, the Greek orators, Xenophon, and, most importantly, Plato, was essentially unknown in the Middle Ages. The Greek view was known and understood only to the extent to which Roman authors, such as Cicero, had faithfully presented Greek thought in Latin texts, such as the Tusculan Disputations, in which Cicero presents the views, as he understood them, of the several Greek schools of philosophy. It cannot be understated how imperfect the understanding of the ancient – at any rate, the Greco-Roman – world was until Greek texts began being studied in the originals in the 15th century. It is at this point that the Renaissance acquires its primary historical significance as a tremendous effort to reconcile the ancient and Medieval systems of thought because it was only at this point that the ancient system began to be properly understood by means of the rediscovery of Greece.

Plato, I note above, was perhaps the most important of those Greek thinkers who were reintroduced. The forms, the conception of the wise man, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul were all deeply attractive elements of Platonic thought to men of the Renaissance. Renaissance art began to increasingly emphasize the beauty of the human form, which Socrates, of course, considered as important as the development of the mind and which, in general, was a very Greek value judgment rather than a Roman one. The philosophers, gathered around Lorenzo di Medici at Florence, extolled beauty as a good as great as wisdom and speculated that the great reconciliation of the ancients and Christianity was to be found in the Phaedo and the Republic, not, perhaps, in the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

It was in this context that Baldassare Castiglione understood his ideal courtier to have lived and been educated. The dialogue, published in 1528, takes place in 1507 at the court of Urbino, perhaps the most refined court in all of the Italian Renaissance. The characters, in choosing a topic for evening conversation, decide to attempt to determine which characteristics would constitute the perfect courtier. The importance of this topic was not merely as a starting point for a discussion that turned into a broader philosophical debate on questions such as the nature of love and about the best form of government – although the dialogue does address these themes – but as one of some practicality, given the centrality of the court as a political and cultural institution during the Italian Renaissance. All of the great artists and intellectuals sought patronage at court, including, as for example, Pietro Bembo, who is a character in the dialogue and was one of the preeminent scholars of the late 15th century. The court was also the milieu in which state policy was formed, a cabinet of advisors as much as a forum for theoretical discussion. To mold oneself into an ideal courtier was a valuable, practical aspiration for men living in this period and the work can be viewed as a sort of manual as well as a philosophical treatise, in the way we can understand, for example, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia as a manual for kings and statesmen.

The discussion is carried on over the course of four evenings and the first is dedicated primarily to describing the skills that a perfect courtier would possess. Much of this is almost simply a regurgitation of the four classical virtues – justice, temperance, prudence, and courage – as being necessary for the courtier to learn and acquire. There are certain elements of the discussion, however, that present the courtier as a distinctly Renaissance man. These include the preference that the courtier be of aristocratic lineage, even as this is deemed insufficient by itself to make a man good, and the emphasis on manners, which can be understood as a form of prudence. The courtier must appreciate what is the polite action in a given circumstance and, while this is necessarily situational, it is conceptually different than appreciating the right or good action in a given circumstance. We can probably ascribe this to the context in which the courtier would be operating – that of a court, where refinement, taste, judgment, and discretion are just as important and certainly more agreeable than the more aggressive self-assertive personality traits which might be understood to be the ancient ideal, as reflected in the magnanimous man of Aristotle, who is certainly overbearing and might struggle to succeed in court-life.

One other discussion, which was also understood as important to the ancients, is that of the distinction between seeming and being. On the one hand, we might suppose, based on what I just wrote about the context of a court emphasizing, in a sense, form as much as substance, that the characters in the dialogue would agree as to the ultimate preeminence of seeming over being. Or, perhaps, they might take a position similar to what I understand Machiavelli’s to be that seeming is entirely sufficient for success or attainment in this world – which is the world we should concern ourselves with – and the distinction is of little importance. As a practical matter, if we can seem to possess prudence, justice, etc, that is the same as actually being prudent, just, etc, because the consequences for possessing any particular trait are inevitably the result of others’ perceptions that we do or do not possess a particular trait and not our own self-understanding of whether we do.

The courtier, on the other hand, I think, is expected to be as well as to seem judiciously. This aspect of judiciousness – for example, being courageous but at times appearing to be less courageous than we actually are to avoid provoking jealously in others, especially in our superiors or our prince – is, I think, Castiglione’s answer to the question. There are innumerable instances in the modern, democratic world where we must display only part of our virtue, lest we set a target on our backs by appearing to pretend to some position of superiority over our fellows, who are equal with us and with each other. Castiglione’s position is like that of Gracian, who advises, ‘the truth, but not the whole truth.’

This notion of being prudent to avoid giving offense, especially in the case of our relationship with the political community, is quite a modern idea. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus comes to grief for his arrogance before the Roman people and, although no doubt Shakespeare did not fully invent this dynamic and it is reflected in the sources, I cannot help but suppose that this faux pas was exaggerated, perhaps because it transgressed so obviously the teaching of Castiglione, with whom Shakespeare was certainly familiar. In his answer to whether to seem or to be is better for the ideal courtier, Castiglione quietly announces the emerging, democratic age.

In relation to this, we might find it useful to explore whether Castiglione or Machiavelli was the more modern thinker. It has been argued that Machiavelli was the first modern political philosopher, in large part because his understanding of life is entirely or almost exclusively political and his ethics are empirical and focused on effectiveness, not on morality. Machiavelli is, in a sense, a composite of Aristotle, Darwin, and Nietzsche, because he connects the threads of political life, effectiveness in a way that suggests a rough understanding of natural selection, and amorality. There is no practical utility in discussing life after death because we should concern ourselves exclusively with achievement in this life; anxiety about what might happen to a prince after his death in penalty of his immoral deeds in this life is to be stamped out. In fact, the most seemingly moral acts, Machiavelli tells us, are often the most immoral in terms of their consequences. A summary, awe-inspiring execution of a political opponent, for example, can do more to prevent bloodshed throughout the community than leniency, which could be a stimulus to revolt. The ends justify the means, for Machiavelli, and modern governments, including – perhaps especially – the most ideological ones, have since adopted this as a maxim of state policy.

I think, from the standpoint of political science and philosophy, Machiavelli anticipates – and, as Mansfield judges, ultimately founds – modernity. The best argument to advance in support of Castiglione concerning the question of whether he or Machiavelli is the more modern thinker is, I think, that Castiglione understood key elements of human life apart from the pursuit of power in a way which a modern person would understand them. We now arrive at the concept of Sprezzatura.

Sprezzatura, which is coined by one of characters in the dialogue, can be roughly translated as ‘a certain nonchalance.’ In relation to the discussion about avoiding giving offense and presenting ourselves with graciousness and good manners in society, mastery of Sprezzatura is judged to be essential for the ideal courtier to possess. It is, in effect, being able to do excellent, difficult things while appearing as if doing such excellent, difficult things is effortless or nearly effortless. It is the key to advancing in the world while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability that we are not attempting to assert ourselves above others. It requires perfect understanding of what is, in fact, the right action in a given circumstance, and how to perform that action in a way that is most agreeable to onlookers. It requires our courtier to possess a profound knowledge of human psychology in general and also a personalized understanding of what will appeal to a particular audience. Sprezzatura is the basis of getting along effectively with others while nonetheless demonstrating high ability; it is more essential for the modern politician to grasp and master than anything in Machiavelli’s writings.

High ability is, importantly, not the same as perfection. Perfection is unattainable and, it might be argued, Machiavelli’s prince is expected to be too perfectly rational and amoral for him to serve as a practical model to emulate. The courtier, on the contrary, is expected to be good at nearly everything, best in one or two things, but deliberately inferior to the very best in certain things. For example, the courtier should understand and be able to play chess competently, but not be excellent at chess because becoming excellent at chess would require such an expenditure of time that others might suppose the courtier to have neglected other fields in order to become excellent at chess. The impressiveness of being able to play it well, while not so well as to create a diminished estimation of the courtier’s other skills, is Sprezzatura.

We will end this discussion with a question, regarding the implications of what has just been said. Is the modern world one of specialists or generalists? Or, perhaps, is the specialist – Machiavelli’s prince, I think, is a specialist at acquiring and retaining power – or the generalist – Castiglione’s courtier – a more useful ideal to which to aspire in the modern world? I think, at face value, the specialist seems to triumph. Specialization is characteristic of the modern economy, with its division of labor. It hardly matters, it would seem, if we can do innumerable things well but nothing at the highest level of excellence. We will be out-competed and starve.

On the other hand, is not the reconciliation – we might say synthesis – of different bodies of knowledge equally characteristic of the modern world, as given impulse and direction by the Renaissance? We all have access to – and might have to leverage – knowledge in more fields than were conceivable to the ancients and the Medievals, to say nothing of the fact that we live in society with people who have knowledge on different topics and, if we wish to be agreeable and not ostracized, we must be able to engage with them on their own terms. The generalist – the person who attempts to understand all things, attaining mastery or near mastery in only a few areas – probably has a distinct advantage over the specialist in the modern world because of the social element, which is undervalued by arguments that focus on the hyper-competitive nature of the modern economy. Maybe we should study The Courtier more closely, but not too closely, and always without an air of seeming to care too much either way.

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